


sing we for love and idleness

by futuredescending



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Authorial Self-Indulgence at its Finest, Blood Drinking, M/M, Vampires, Violence, brief references to human trafficking and prostitution, graphic description of blood, too much realism for a vampire fic is that a thing?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2018-08-19 08:33:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 84,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8198279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuredescending/pseuds/futuredescending
Summary: Leave it to Harry to unintentionally turn himself into a vampire. Merlin is still trying to wrap his head around it, and his inner rationalist still vehemently protests the very term, but for lack of a better one, vampire is what they have to go on, so vampire it is.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The self-indulgent vampire au perhaps no one wanted but is happening anyway. If you're curious about the title, read [this](http://www.bartleby.com/265/291.html) lovely gem.

It’s a long, fundamentally uninteresting drive from the rough patch of landing strip that dares call itself a regional airport to the church, filled with rolling stretches of farm fields, tractors, silos, cows, and bog-like heat. Then again, Merlin has never thought too highly of places where the cows outnumber the people six to one and Kentucky was never going to earn his high esteem.

Travelling through this isolated, landlocked cradle of America, it’s not such a far stretch to imagine how hatred for the unknown, the different, could be born and nurtured here. Time barely seemed to move; the fastest thing to change were the seasons, but there, too, was a comforting predictability, familiar as gazing into the same dull white faces every day. By the time a few hallmarks of civilisation pop up on the landscape, Merlin is thoroughly disgruntled, a sour mood from which not even being able to drive on actual blacktop with nary a dirt-lined rural road in sight can shake him.

It’s quite frankly a miracle he hasn’t encountered more evidence of devastation until he nears the church, and even then, the fallout from Valentine’s signal is subtle, only observable when he looks for it. A car run off the road and abandoned. Scorch marks lining the side of a house. A spray of shattered glass lining the road whose origin Merlin does not know.

Perhaps the most telling sign is that he has yet to encounter a single other living soul, even in this small, sparsely-populated region of America. No one else on the roads or playing out on their front lawns or walking about outdoors. It’s as if the world here, which had only been moving glacially before anyway, is now frozen in one moment of time.

At first, nothing even seems amiss at the South Glade Mission Church. Cars remain silent and lonely in the carpark. The trees sluggishly shift in the limp summer breeze. The old church’s steeple juts up into the sky, proudly pious. There is the possibility that first responders could have accessed the scene given the sizable window between the initial massacre and the worldwide signal being set off, but aside from a small suburban housing development across the narrow little road, there is nothing out here for miles, and a quick bit of research into the residents of said housing development confirm that nearly all of them had been members of the church. A nice situation for them to spew their hatred and vitriol in peace, certainly, but it did mean anyone who had still been alive in the church itself had probably long since expired from their injuries for lack of immediate aid being sent their way. Merlin can’t exactly find it in himself to be sympathetic.

It’s only when he pulls up directly in front of the little building that he sees the lone body still sprawled out indecorously across the ground, cross-shaped, a pool of sticky dark blood spreading out from his head like a bottle of spilt ink.

Merlin leaves the air-conditioned confines of his car for the thick, suffocating air outside, closing the gap in four long strides to stand over the body of his fallen agent. There’s a blackened, gaping hole where Harry’s left eye used to be, visible behind the missing lens of his glasses. Merlin knows the back of him is a good sight uglier: the upper left quadrant of Harry’s skull head would be blown wide open by the bullet’s exit and turned into little more than minced brain matter, blood, and skull fragments. As it is, the flies are thick in the air. The stench of decay and putrefaction rises up from the body in almost visible waves, hastened by the sun and heat. Not good.

Still it’s not the worst thing Merlin’s had to deal with.

“God damn it, Harry,” Merlin sighs.

To anyone else, it would seem as if his weary tone conveyed the frustrations of a disgruntled valet tutting over the state of his master’s habitually careless treatment of his garments and not a grieving man who had not so long ago witnessed his best friend being shot in the face at point blank range.

Stranger still is when Merlin bends down to take hold of one slightly stiff arm and pull the corpse into an upright position before wrapping his arms around Harry’s torso and hoisting his entire body up in a fireman’s carry. Slowly and awkwardly, Merlin carries the body across the small carpark, trying not to get tripped up by Harry’s long, gangly legs when they mingle with his.

When he nears his car, he pauses, caught in indecision. It seems rather disrespectful, but travelling about with a corpse in the back seat—or worse, the passenger side—would not do, to say nothing of the stench, so into the boot Harry’s body goes, limbs ungraciously bent and stuffed to fit neatly inside it.

If Harry were aware of what was happening, he’d no doubt complain about his body’s crude treatment, but Merlin would argue there’s very little about death that’s ever elegant and dignified.

He would know, after all, given how bloody often he’s had to deal with all of Harry’s.

 

_____

 

Harry abruptly wakes up to a an enteral tube being shoved halfway down his throat. He has enough restraint not to immediately lash out, but it’s a near thing.

“For fuck’s sake.” It comes out slightly nasal and therefore more whingeing than he would have preferred.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Merlin says above him. “The parts of your brain that control motor function haven’t regenerated yet and I don’t want a mess.”

It’s true. When Harry tries, he finds he can’t even open his eyes, much less will his hands up to shove Merlin off and rip the blasted thing out of his nose and throat. “I obviously have control of my speech,” he says sourly. “I can eat through my mouth.”

“This way is more fun.” Merlin doesn’t even bother hiding the smug amusement in his tone. “And more convenient for me. I don’t have to stand here and hold the bag for you while you suck blood through a straw. Unlike some people, now, I still have a 24/7 job.”

Harry can’t read Merlin’s expression, but he can hear the tension in his tone, the way his accent is more pronounced out of sheer exhaustion. “What happened? I’m assuming the world didn’t end and I’m not being kept down here in your bunker as your post-apocalyptic bride.”

A bunker is just an assumption though. Harry can only guess based on what his senses tell him: they are deep underground because Harry can smell the dirt that lies beyond the thickly reinforced walls. If he concentrates further, he can hear the earthworms and small rodents burrowing through the earth. There is the hum of the lights and the generators and Merlin’s many servers. Laughter somewhere several floors up. People eating in the cafeteria. Harry can pick out the voices, laughter. Lab technicians. Handlers. Percival. _Eggsy_.

“You flatter yourself if you think I’d willingly spend my remaining days stuck in a bunker with you.”

“Who else would you have?” Harry asks.

To that, Merlin has no response.

“The world didn’t end,” Merlin finally says. “But it was a near thing. Thousands of casualties. Arthur was a traitor who sided with Valentine along with Tristan and Kay. Bedivere and Gawain were killed during the melee. However, Eggsy and Roxy managed to stop the signal before it could completely end most of human civilisation as we know it, kill Valentine, and free the hostages. Plus or minus a few exploded heads of various celebrities, wealthy elites, and most of the world’s leaders.”

It’s a long time before Harry can speak again, but to be fair, it was a lot to absorb. “Huh. Well done, I suppose.”

“He saw it, you know.”

“Saw what?”

“What happened at the church as well as what happened after. He must have tapped into your feed from your home laptop. I see we’ll need to have another talk about security best practises, but in light of more pressing issues, I’m willing to table that discussion for another time.”

The thought of Eggsy witnessing what he had done, how Valentine’s signal had awoken the beast inside him, how he had the savagery, too worked up on his bloodlust to even feed off it as he would normally have done had he been in control of himself, makes him feel ill. Harry swallows thickly only to gag around the tube. He concentrates on not losing the precious blood being pumped into his stomach, wielding his steely restraint in this endeavour as has had to do in all things ever since he’d been cursed with this whole condition.

“I’m sorry,” Merlin says quietly. “Arthur had been watching as well, but as he is now a cadaver sitting in our morgue, he’s rather the least of our concerns.”

“I see,” Harry says once he feels like he has regained a modicum of control. “I suppose this means Harry Hart is officially deceased. You will give him my title, won’t you? By the sounds of it, he’s more than earned it.”

“Well, he has five to choose from, but yes, he can have it should he want it.”

“Thank you,” Harry says, though he can’t help feeling a bit mournful for its loss, thankfully still somewhat muted by his body’s attention on shoring up the physical. Probably to the good. There will undoubtedly be a time when it will fully hit him: He cannot go back to the only life he has ever known. He will never see his friends again. He will never be a Kingsman agent again. He will never see Eggsy fulfill his potential and become the knight and gentleman Harry always knew he could be. “On the bright side, as soon as I am recovered enough, I can be out of your hair for good this time, Merlin. Or what’s left of it. No more cover-ups, no more lies.”

He’s trying to keep his tone lighthearted, but grows unnerved when Merlin does not immediately respond in kind. He can sense the hesitant silence as he hears Merlin move about the room, checking the blood bags, fiddling with the valves of the tubing, adjusting the sheet that has been carefully draped over the top half of his head to shield what is a gruesome open wound, healing though it is.

At last, when Merlin speaks, it is with heavy reluctance. “I can’t you let you do that, Harry.”

“Do what?” he asks, trying to ignore the sense of dread that fills him.

“Leave and disappear. I cannot, in good conscience, allow it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re a dangerous element, Harry. To unleash you upon the world without any controls would be irresponsible. Unconscionable.”

For several moments, Harry does not know how to respond. He goes through a range of emotions in quick succession: shock, disbelief, betrayal, and finally anger. “I have been controlling myself for over a decade now.”

“Recent events would put that into question.”

Harry wishes he could sit up, open his eyes, and face Merlin head on. Perhaps rush forward, leverage his immense strength and speed to force the issue. He wishes he could just _move_. “My control was taken away from me. It could have happened to anyone. It _did_.”

“Indeed, it did. But you out of control is a very different animal to an average civilian out of control, or even a Kingsman agent.” Harry supposes Merlin’s use of the word _animal_ was intentional. “After what you did in that church, Harry, how you walked away with barely a scratch...what happens if you lose control like that again? What if you're in a public space? An enclosed space with other civilians? What if you can’t feed in time before your hunger causes you to go feral? I’ve seen what happens, Harry. You may say there’s only a small chance of that happening, but it’s a risk I cannot take.”

Harry is beyond incensed, and all he can do is grind his teeth, elongated sharp incisors descending from his gums in a desire to rend and tear but being unable to do so. “I can’t be a Kingsman agent anymore, but I can’t leave Kingsman. So you mean to keep me a secret prisoner here.”

Merlin sighs. “I prefer to call you a long-term guest, at least until we can figure out something more mutually beneficial, but the world is in a bit of upheaval right now, and I’m afraid I don’t have the time or mental reserves to give it the consideration it deserves for the moment.”

“For how long? You can’t possibly think you can keep me locked up here forever, Merlin. I'll get out of here one day. You’re only delaying the inevitable.”

To which Merlin only says with a heavy tone of resignation, “What else do we do at Kingsman but delay the inevitable?”

“I trusted you.” There's accusation in his tone.

“You trusted me to keep you in check,” Merlin reminds him. “And I am a man of my word, so that is what I shall do.”

 

_____

 

It happens on that damn mission in Hungary. One moment Harry is gathering evidence in a facility rumoured to be conducting illegal experiments on kidnapped persons from an oppressed ethnic minority, and the next, something flashes across the monitors that Harry’s point of view from his glasses, which are set to night vision to accommodate the darkness of the compound. It’s too quick and happens only in Harry’s periphery. By the time Harry pivots and turns fully to the source of that movement, it’s too late.

The thing, whatever it is, a flash of bright green with black pits for eyes and elongated teeth, bursts from the sickly green shadows and attacks. The glasses are knocked from Harry’s face and land somewhere in the corner of the lab. All Merlin is left with are the bone-chilling sounds.

Animalistic snarling, something crashing and shattering, grunts of exertion and struggle, and then Harry’s surprised cry of pain, which Merlin has so rarely heard in all the years Harry has been an agent, not even when he had been subjected to hours of interrogation where wooden dowels had been inserted beneath the nails of his fingers and toes. The sound causes Merlin’s breath to stutter in his chest.

After that, it’s an imperfect smear of memories, which frustrates Merlin to no end because he prides himself on his near-perfect recall. There’s more snarling, and then gruesome wet sounds like an animal is slurping at something, and Harry’s horrible wails of pain. Merlin nearly jumps out of his chair when the loud crack of several gun shots cuts through the audio, followed by an even more inhuman, low-throated cry, and then silence.

“Galahad?” he asks when he finally finds his voice again. “Harry?”

For the longest time, there is nothing but the sound of humming air from the compound’s generators, and then Merlin hears it, faint and barely audible: the gasp, the pained rattle of the exhale. Again and again.

“Talk to me, Harry,” he finds himself pleading. “What the hell just happened?” 

There’s a wet gurgle and then an even wetter gagging, and the pained breathing becomes weaker still. But Harry tries. God, does Harry try. “Merrrrrr….”

Harry never finishes, though. There’s one last desperate sharp intake of air, a sighing moan of his breath leaving him for the last time, and then Merlin hears nothing else.

It’s the first time Merlin has ever been made to so intimately bear witness to an agent’s death and it shakes him to his very core. The next few hours go by in a dazed blur. He calls for a cleanup crew to retrieve Harry’s body and erase all evidence of Kingsman’s involvement from the site. He drinks two glasses of scotch to calm his nerves.

For some reason, though, he never alerts Arthur, and to this day, even he couldn’t say why.

He’s later grateful for that departure from protocol when in the next twelve hours, the cleanup crew returns without Harry’s body and disturbing reports of how every single worker at the facility, from the custodial staff to the guards, had been found dead via, of all things, _exsanguination_.

Six hours after that, Harry Hart shows up on the front doorstep of his house in the middle of the night, covered head to toe in blood that mostly isn’t his, wild-eyed.

“I think something very horrible has happened to me,” is the first thing Harry says.

 

_____

 

Leave it to Harry to unintentionally turn himself into a vampire. Merlin is still trying to wrap his head around it, and his inner rationalist still vehemently protests the very term, but for lack of a better one, vampire is what they have to go on, so vampire it is.

Harry managed to shoot the humanoid creature several times in the head, he explains, but not before the creature had taken a sizeable chunk out of his throat and nearly drained his entire body of his blood.

“The creature’s carcass fell on top of me after I shot it and I was too weak to move, much less move it off,” Harry recounts after he’s used Merlin’s shower to wash and borrowed his old uni sweatshirt and a pair of plaid pyjama bottoms. “It simply...bled on me. It must have infected my open wounds. And then I died.”

He now sits in Merlin’s favourite leather upholstered chair in his usual manner: posture upright but relaxed enough to be considered casual, even insouciant, like he’s still wearing his pristine Kingsman suit and not Merlin’s layabout clothing, hale, hearty and whole. There isn’t a scratch on him that Merlin can see, much less the grievous wounds he had explained led to his demise. Merlin had offered him a drink to settle his nerves after what must have been a traumatising time, but Harry had uncharacteristically declined.

“And then you died,” Merlin repeats flatly, because it is the most anticlimactic way to end a story ever. “And that’s it.”

“More or less.” Harry shrugs, picking a few pills off the flannel at his knee.

“Harry, when you showed up at my door, you looked like you had a gleeful time of it in an abattoir. You’ll have to do better than that.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“The truth!” Merlin demands, feeling like he’s going mad or caught up in some terrible fever dream. “You can start by explaining all the dead workers at the compound, for one, ”

This produces an unexpected flinch. It’s quite rare to catch Harry off guard, to see him in visible discomfort or to glean from him any evidence of vulnerability. He’s almost always shameless, confident in his abilities and judgment, and has a silver tongue that has justified and made seem reasonable even the most insane of actions. But when Harry finally breaks down now, Merlin can’t gloat or feel even the remotest sense of satisfaction. All he can feel is dread.

Defying sheer logic, Harry had woken up, only he had woken up with a fierce burning in his throat and an empty, painful hunger in his belly, a need so overwhelming and all-consuming, he had never felt anything like it.

At first he thought he had gone to hell for his sins to feel so terribly, but then he heard it, like the sweetest notes of a symphony: heartbeats, so many of them.

Harry had been too weak to move given most of his blood now existed outside his body and with his throat gaping raggedly open, so he waited until _they_ came to him, and as soon as one drew close enough, he found an innate strength and drive he didn’t know he had and struck out.

“I don’t...it’s less clear what happened next,” Harry says, no longer able to look Merlin in the eye. Probably a good thing as Merlin knew the expression on his face was probably not at all comforting. “I was ravenous, Merlin. Something inside of me knew what I needed and it just...took over.”

By the time Harry had come back to his senses, his hunger had been if not completely satisfied than at least momentarily slaked, his wounds had healed, and everyone in the facility was dead.

The guards had discharged their weapons several times over, the cleanup crew’s report had stated. There were many, many bullet casings at the site, but in an unexpected turn, just as many bullets. They had littered the ground everywhere, coated in dried flakes of blood like they _had_ pierced a body but had somehow been expelled.

“Even now,” Harry tells him, “There’s this burning at the back of my throat. I’m still so...so hungry, Merlin. I can hear your heart beating and the blood moving through your veins.”

Harry looks at him, or rather, at the pulse point in his neck. It’s difficult to pinpoint what changes about him. The pupils of his eyes expand until they overtake his brown irises. He doesn’t really move but somehow his whole body becomes angular, less affable charming gentleman and more tensely coiled like a predator readying to pounce.

The very air shifts. Merlin feels the whisper of danger goosebump his skin.

“If you kill me now,” Merlin tells him through the tight vice of fear that strangles his throat, “You will never get to the bottom of this.”

The words act as a figurative dousing of cold water. Harry starts, shaking his head a little like he’s trying to jar his mind back into proper working order. When he realises what he has almost done, his eyes widen in horror and he visibly shrinks back into his chair. “Oh god. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to….I didn’t….” He swallows like he’s going to be sick and covers his face with his hands. “All those people. I killed—ate—all those people. And I wanted to, Merlin. I...I _enjoyed_ it. I’ve been turned into a monster.”

It takes a very long time for Merlin’s pulse to settle back into something resembling baseline, longer still for him to find his words again that are any measure of comforting. “Well, monster or not, at least there’s still some humanity left to you.”

“What am I going to do? I can’t keep...being like this.”

Finally, Merlin takes a chance and leans forward, daring to rest his hand on Harry’s chilled knee, causing the other man to look up at him imploringly, more lost and confused than Merlin had ever known he could be. It _is_ a comfort to know that Harry is still just a man beneath all this newfound terror. “We’ll sort this out as we have always done, but know this: you are not alone.”

Sometimes Merlin looks back on that night and wonders whether or not, if he knew then what he knows now, he’d make the same promise.

 

_____

 

They are very organised about it all. In fact, if ever there were a pair better equipped to deal with the wildly fantastic and unknown, it would be them. Merlin adheres to a rigourous scientific method of hypothesis, vigourous and extensive testing, and then observing the results, tweaking variable factors and then testing again. Harry is fearless and cavalierly curious about discovering the fewer limits of his new existence. As it would happen, it helps that Harry is rather hard to kill now.

Or, to be more precise, Harry is rather hard to kill in a manner that is in any way irreversible. He can be shot and stabbed repeatedly until he nearly bleeds out. His limbs can be severed. He can fall from heights great enough to pulverise his skeleton and organs. He can be poisoned, choked, garrotted, drowned, hung, smothered.

There doesn’t appear to be a window of time in which he needs to feed in order to regenerate. Given enough blood, he always heals, always grows back damaged or missing limbs and organs and tissue, swiftly or slowly depending on the extent of the wound and its placement. Anything affecting the brain is always much slower and requires much more blood, which makes sense given how complicated an organ it is.

When Harry isn’t conscious enough to physically drink the blood he needs to recover, Merlin feeds it to him through the feeding tube. After one close call wherein Harry nearly rips his head off, Merlin now knows that a starving Harry is a savage, mindlessly feral Harry and must be treated like a dangerous animal.

They still have the carcass of the beast that had attacked Harry. Laid out on the table in Merlin’s private laboratory, it barely seems human, though the DNA results point to it having been at least partially that at some point. The rest, however, Merlin has never seen before. After gleaning from it all the data and samples he can, Merlin has the carcass incinerated, not only to erase evidence but just in case there is a chance the beast could be revived as Harry could do.

Harry is immensely stronger and faster now, able to rip heavy doors sheer off their hinges. His reflexes are simply incredible. He is an unstoppable force on his missions, more so than he usually is. Merlin handles all his missions to ensure no one sees anything too impossible and fudges all of his medical exams. His success rate is now almost 100%, so no one really looks too deeply into why.

Harry’s senses have become sharper, but interestingly enough, not all of them. His eyesight is slightly worse on average and he sees far less colour than he used to, but it’s still far superior to a human’s in the dark and he tracks any sort of movement much more reactively. His tastebuds have dulled to most foods save for the rich copper of fresh blood and raw flesh. His nose can detect even the faintest traces of the chemicals used to sterilise Merlin’s lab from nearly a week ago or that Merlin spilled tea on his shirt last night and hadn’t a chance yet to change, so he’d gone and thrown a jumper over it.

But it’s his hearing that has become his most acute sense: heartbeats, he tells Merlin, are everywhere, like a continuous drumming. Most of the time Harry treats them like white noise, but if he lets his guard slip for even a moment, he can become fixated on them until his nose is practically buried in Merlin’s neck, and, once, he had actually licked Merlin’s skin, much to both of their surprise and horrified disgust.

“I’m sorry,” Harry apologises over and over again, backing up from Merlin so quickly he’s hit the wall on the opposite side of the room. “It’s the hunger. I never _not_ feel it.”

Harry needs about four units of blood a day to not become feral, though Merlin suspects he’d be capable of draining the entire countryside if left unchecked. The hunger is always there, Harry tells him, unquenched, burning, only varying in degrees of intensity depending on how frequently he’s satiated it.

All blood is good and nourishing, but human is best. It heals the fastest and Harry prefers it the most. What he does not say, and what Merlin does not ask, is whether or not he’d rather have it fresh out of a body and not from a bag.

He has no heartbeat, no need to breathe though he still does so out of habit, and his core body temperature is decidedly _room_. He is less pale when he’s just fed, his skin more flush and even warm, but most of the time it veers towards an understandably deathly pallour, and Harry becomes a master at applying flesh-coloured makeup.

He can eat and drink as much as he likes to keep up appearances but ultimately his body rejects anything that isn’t blood, human or animal. They learn this when Merlin has Harry eat a full meal and eventually Harry has to retch out all the undigested food into the toilet.

“Galahad the Purger, is it?” Harry jokes as he wipes a kernel of corn from the corner of his mouth.

“You’re the one insisting in carrying on as normal,” Merlin says without much sympathy.

Much to Harry’s delight, he can get drunk when he’s drunk blood from an intoxicated person.

Sunlight doesn’t appear to immediately kill Harry as the myths would commonly dictate, but it does seem to significantly weaken him, starting with light sensitivity, then headaches and fatigue. The effects worsen the longer he remains directly exposed to it. Merlin suspects that given enough time and exposure, Harry maybe could die from it after all, but it’s not something either of them are willing to test. It’s a fortunate thing, then, that they live on an isle in possession of frequent cloud cover.

Garlic, crosses, and holy water do nothing, but those tests had been done for the sake of eye-rolling due diligence rather than out of any genuine belief they would be effective.

“I don’t know. Garlic is worse coming back up then going down,” Harry says, eyes watering, as he spits out macerated garlic into the toilet. “And it’s pretty terrible going down.”

But all of it, both the new discoveries and failures, give Merlin a good basis from which to build, including defencive and offencive weapons to be used against Harry should it ever come down to it. He desperately hopes it won’t, but Merlin is pragmatic at heart and won’t delude himself into thinking it might never do.

 

_____

 

As Harry heals—his eye slowly blooming in its socket, brain expanding to fill up the empty spaces in his skull, the bone plates knitting themselves back together, scalp slowly crawling over to cover and seal him back in again, and last of all, his hair growing back at an accelerated pace—he continues to resent Merlin, making it known with every heated glare once he has two whole eyes again, and a stubborn silence lined with murderous intent.

He doesn’t really know how long it’s been, has some notion that it has been, quite possibly, months, given how long it generally takes to regrow organs. There is no night nor day nor anything by which to mark the passing of time in this windowless room deep beneath the earth, and Kingsman hardly moves at any routine schedule.

As he’s grown stronger, healed, and eventually become mobile again, Merlin has wisely pulled back on his physical presence. He feeds Harry through a drawer in the wall that delivers him two bags of human blood approximately every twelve hours, heated to exactly 37 degrees. He’s programmed the door with something that Harry cannot bypass, probably something petty like _having a pulse_. He gives Harry access to a telly that’s encased in some unbreakable transparent polymer, like he’s a patient in a mental ward. It’s controlled by one of Merlin’s many durable tablets that also allows Harry one way access to the internet and therefore the world beyond, and Harry would be a fool to break it out of anger.

Harry thinks about Eggsy too often, even tries to hack into Kingsman’s servers to keep watch over his progress, but of course Merlin has locked him out of that too. He wonders what Eggsy is doing, if Merlin has him as overworked as he tends to do to the other knights as well as himself.

Harry wonders where Eggsy is in the world, what is he doing, how many people he has killed, if he has been able to kill at all, the boy who would not even shoot his dog.

Does Eggsy miss Harry at all? Does he feel regret over their final harsh words? Is he happy that Harry is gone? Smug that he has proven Harry wrong many times over?

Eggsy must have his Kingsman suit by now. Several suits even. Harry never got see how he looked, so he has to imagine it. He dreams up an entire gentleman’s wardrobe for Eggsy, the greens that will bring out his eyes, the blues that will make him alluring.

Harry had once thought there would be time once Eggsy achieved knighthood. Many, many years of Eggsy making Harry’s own very long ones just a little brighter. Ridiculous in hindsight. Eggsy could die at any moment on any mission, and even if he didn’t, he and others would soon wonder as to why Harry never seemed to get older.

No, Harry’s fantasies had merely been the wishes of a lonely, old monster who still thinks he’s a man.

Harry can still feel arousal, though it’s often a muted, distant thing. It’s only when he’s had fresh blood that the arousal can feel sharp, more alive and vibrant, like he’s human again. He can even get hard. Even ejaculate. Every time he feeds now, he thinks about Eggsy, the way he moves, like a dancer, gymnast, and lethal fighter in one, and wanks off. It’s pathetic and perverted, but there’s very little by which he can debase himself further these days.

Restless, angry, interminably bored, and always, _always_ ravenous, always drinking his blood too fast and never really feeling satisfied from it, Harry paces the confines of his subterranean prison and thinks of all the ways he will take his revenge upon Merlin once he gets out. They range from the mundane (burning all his jumpers) to the macabre (pulling out his entrails and piling them atop his bald dome like a hat). Occasionally, Harry still tries to find a means of escape through his wits (trying to locate a panel or loose wire configuration he can re-route) or through sheer strength (punching and kicking the wall) but Merlin has been studying his strengths and weaknesses as long as Harry himself has and knows how to contain him.

“Please let me out,” he resorts to begging when his next delivery of blood is shoved through the pass-through drawer. “I can’t stand to be trapped in here for another second. I’m going mad in here, Merlin. Please!”

“I’m sorry, Harry.” Merlin sounds it too, like he’s in pain, like everything Harry is saying hurts him. Good. “Just a little while longer. It’s a very busy time, but we’ve almost got it.”

Then Merlin leaves and Harry admits he loses his head just a bit, screaming and cursing at Merlin, smashing his fists against the wall, trying to rip that damn drawer out from the wall.

At the height of his madness, Harry starts tearing at himself with his own teeth, biting the veins of his arms open over and over again to overwhelm his regenerative abilities and allow his damned blood to leak out of him.

It’s poisoned blood anyway, tainted by a monster, turning him into one, and if he gets enough of it out, maybe, just maybe, he can be human again and Merlin will set him free, but if he can’t go back, can never go back, then at least this will be another exit, because he’s fucking done.

 

_____

 

When he comes back from the Moroccan mission, Merlin is the first person who greets him, standing at the bottom of the stairs with a strained neutral expression as Harry deplanes. There’s no one else in the hangar, which is somewhat unusual, which means Merlin wants to talk about _that._

“Galahad,” Merlin says. “We should talk.”

“Later. I need to shower and debrief,” Harry says, trying anyway.

“No,” Merlin says before turning on his heel, expecting Harry to follow.

What can Harry do but what is expected? He has not only come to rely on his friend and handler, but he’s now been made utterly _dependent_ upon him. Perhaps a strategic mistake, but Harry likes his life, his career. Merlin is necessary in keeping those things.

So Harry follows, albeit more slowly, knowing what Merlin is going to say, knowing that he is right.

Harry had slipped.

To Merlin’s credit, he waits until he and Harry are safely ensconced in his private offices, regularly swept for bugs, entirely free of the all-pervasive surveillance that monitors the rest of the estate. As soon as the door is sealed and locked, however, he turns on Harry, clearly angry. “What the hell was that?”

“I got the job done, didn’t I?” Harry says.

“You _drained_ them. The entire group of mercenaries. It was all on camera. I had to erase the footage and explain to Arthur that there was a malfunction!” Merlin is nearly shouting. Harry has never seen him so infuriated, red-faced, eyes blazing. “Do you realise how foolish that makes me look?”

“I burned the bodies,” Harry says weakly, no longer able to meet Merlin’s gaze. “Made it look like an accident. They were all bound to meet their ends somewhere by the end of this operation.”

“That isn’t the point. If even one had gotten away...if there had been innocents there, would that have stopped you? Would you have been able to discern?” Merlin relentlessly asks, and Harry doesn’t have an answer because in the heat and rampage of his blood lust, he isn’t sure he would have done. “I let you continue as an agent and go out on missions because I trust you are in control of it.”

“It was the sun,” Harry admits. “I overestimated my strength in that climate. And then there was the delay...I needed it. I needed it or I would have done something much, much worse.”

Merlin exhales. The trouble was, Rabat had been too close by. _Worse_ was an understatement. “This can’t happen again. Once is already one time too many, Harry.”

“I know,” Harry says miserably. “I know. I’ll do better. I promise.”

They both know what will happen if Harry doesn’t.

 

_____

 

Harry wakes up feeling more sluggish and disoriented than he has since...since probably Before. When he tries to move his arms and legs, he finds them strapped down. The damn feeding tube is back.

“Blood laced with heavy sedatives,” Merlin explains, coming into blurry view. Even still, Harry can see how his face is marred by equal parts haggardness, guilt, and disappointment. He smells like stale sweat and too much tea and not enough food.

“If you won’t free me,” Harry slurs, “Then you should kill me. I can’t live like this anymore.” Tired. Lonely. Inhuman.

“I’m trying to fix this,” Merlin says earnestly. “You must give me more time.”

“How long? Months? Years? I suppose it’s not supposed to matter to me anymore, but I’ve been human longer than I’ve been...this.” He stopped aging the moment he became the monster. One can only assume he will remain just as he is, fifty-two years old in appearance, in perpetuity.

“Not for much longer,” Merlin says. “I’m making a special trip, following up on a few leads. It will take...weeks. I can bring in a refrigerator unit and leave you enough blood to last that entire time, but you will have to ration it.”

“Weeks,” Harry repeats dully, thinking of the long, dark stretch of nothingness yawning ahead of him, letting the weight of it sink into his already heavy bones. What does it matter? Nothing will ever change. “Fine. But I want you to promise me something.”

“What?”

“If you don’t find anything by the time you come back, then you must let me die.” Harry means it. He tries to look Merlin in the eye, even though his are most likely glassy and unfocused. “Like I should have done all those years ago.”

Stricken, Merlin swallows, looks like he’s going to protest for a moment, but in the end eventually says, “Alright. You have my word.”

 

_____

 

"Do you like it?" Merlin had once asked him on the third time Harry should have died.

Harry couldn't disarm the bomb in time, only had time to take meagre cover before it detonated. The bomb had vaporised most of his limbs but left the core of him intact, which his new genetic makeup could work with. Nevertheless, it had been many months of painful, itching regeneration, and he still had half his limbs to go. Until then, he couldn't move or leave the secret room in which Merlin was keeping him, having somehow covered for his prolonged absence to the others as having survived the explosion and gone deep undercover on the trail of a more notorious lead. It also meant, of course, that Harry would have to produce a credible mission report by the time he supposedly returned, but that was a problem for another time.

What a question. Harry takes his time in considering it, wants to give Merlin an honest answer as is his due. "Sometimes. I like being physically superior to my enemies. I enjoy seeing their confusion when a bullet that should have taken me out doesn't." He had always relished showing others up, just a little, always had a wide streak of vanity. "And there's a comfort in knowing I won't die."

"No. But you must suffer a good deal in the meantime. You still feel pain. It still takes time to recover. I know you," Merlin says. "You're impatient. This healing must be very frustrating."

"You're not wrong," Harry admits. "It's miserable. Humbling. I've had to redefine my pain tolerances, and were it not for the painkillers you put in my blood, I'd have probably gone mad long ago. But it's more than just the physical. It's knowing...it's knowing how different I am to everyone else now. Most of the time, I can forget, but at times like this, or when the hunger gets to be too much...." He feels alone.

"And what will happen when everyone you know starts to die? If not on the job, then of old age? Illness? Natural causes?" Merlin presses.

"I don't know," Harry says, visibly upset, unable to mask his emotions when under the effects of heavy drugs. "I don't know."

 

_____

 

Merlin installs the refrigerator full of blood that is programmed to open every twelve hours and then leaves. It’s rather pedantic of him, it’s not like Harry couldn’t use one of those access times to simply take all the bags out of the refrigerator and drink them in one go, but he is diligent in his rationing. Two bags, every twelve hours. There are 140 bags in total, which means Merlin thinks he will be gone for, at the very most, four weeks and has probably included a week’s worth of redundancies just in case.

It’s his first way of really marking the passing of time, and Harry finds himself caught up in a pavlovian cycle of looking forward to that beeping sound and telltale hiss, not because he will get to eat again (though he cannot deny that it does not make up a good part of his anticipation), but because it means he’s another half day closer to the end, whatever it may be. It feels monumental. Something is going to happen. He won’t have to live in this purgatory for much longer.

When Harry finishes his 113th bag (chilled, disgusting, but momentarily filling) and there is still no sign of Merlin, he frowns. Merlin is rarely off in his estimates, but he builds in safeguards for a reason. He is, after all, only human, Harry thinks bittersweetly.

It’s when he’s down to his last seven bags that Harry begins to worry, just a little. Merlin has never cut it so close before.

Just in case, though, Harry begins to drink just a little bit less, tries to get himself down to three bags a day. It’s miserable. He feels weak and finds himself zoning out for hours at a time, the emptiness in his stomach constantly clamouring at him for attention, but he at least he keeps his mind, if only barely. _A new record._ He'd have to tell Merlin when he came back from wherever the fuck he went.

Even with these desperate measures, Harry finds himself draining his last bag all too soon, can’t even remember what day it is now, he’s lost track. Merlin still has not returned. He’s too tired to even panic.

 _Maybe_ , a small voice in Harry says, _He is leaving you down here to starve._

Harry laughs at the thought. Will he die from starvation? Can he? He doesn’t know, but he guesses he’s about to find out.

 

_____

 

"Why Eggsy. Why did you choose him?" Merlin had once asked when he was recovering from the effects of the substance that had resulted from Professor Arnold's head blowing up. He suspects any other agent would not have lived through the exposure.

"Because I owed his father—"

"Yes, yes. You owed his father a debt for saving, or thinking he was saving, your life. But you've wracked up enough sins to have guilt over for many lifetimes, Harry, and never have I seen you go to these lengths to make those amends."

Lee Unwin's death had been devastating, and so horribly unnecessary, but Merlin was wrong there. Harry _did_ owe Lee his life, because even though he'd continue walking and talking after Merlin had patched him up, his life at Kingsman would have been over. Harry Hart would have officially died much sooner.

But Merlin was correct in wondering what was it about Eggsy Unwin that had made Harry act as he did, choosing Eggsy for his candidate, breaking protocol left and right for the boy in letting him listen in on his mission, in commissioning a Kingsman suit for him before he had even sealed the deal.

"I liked him from the moment I saw him," Harry says. "He reminded me of myself at that age. Angry and feeling trapped, albeit by rather different circumstances." Eggsy's had been poverty and no opportunities. Harry's had been wealth and the burden of expectations.

It couldn't have been attraction, or at least, not entirely, either. It couldn't have been that his blood had smelled so sweet, that his pulse had sped up while he had witnessed Harry take out his stepfather's men in the pub, not with the usual expected fear of the slightly inhuman and unknown, but with lust.

 

_____

 

He’s always hungry, but with each passing hour with no more sustenance forthcoming, the empty thing inside him grows.

The refrigerator still tauntingly beeps and hisses open every twelve hours but no longer offers succor. 

The gnawing emptiness in his belly expands and swallows him up like a black hole, making him feel like he’s wearing thinner, not quite right in his own skin.

His thoughts often turn to blood, imagining its smell, its taste, seeing it out of the corner of his eye only to turn and find nothing there. He dreams and then daydreams the sight of it gushing from his prey, until it’s all he can think about, day in, day out, every conscious moment. Blood, blood, blood.

He hallucinates. Sees Merlin with him, drenched in blood that is gushing from his mouth like a fountain. Then Eggsy, drawing blood lines over his finely muscled chest, begging for Harry to taste him, drain him. He is back in the church again, except instead of shooting and stabbing and impaling people with whatever objects are closest at hand, he’s tearing at them with his teeth, ripping their limbs from their bodies with his sheer strength, glutting himself on the founts of blood they produce.

He stops remembering who he is, what he is, he only craves. He hears them above him, voices, carriers of blood, _heartbeats_ , all within reach if he can just get out of this cage, find them, drink their rich, sweet, velvety blood from their soft necks.

He wants it. He needs it. He’s so hungry.

So hungry.

It hollows him out, the need. He is the Need, crawling along the edges of the wall in endless revolutions. Smelling, sniffing, inhaling every corner and crevice. He bites down on his tongue to drink in his own blood, then bites into his wrists, sucking pitifully, until they stop yielding anything either.

Eventually he can’t even move, he’s so weak, a sack of hunger sprawled on the floor, little more than a skeleton draped in papery skin, pale, lips dry and cracked, red eyes sunken in.

He mewls a bit until he can’t make any noises at all, and then he sinks so deeply inside of himself, shutting down, down, down, burrowing into the deep.

 

_____

 

It stirs. It hears before it smells. A heartbeat, rabbit-fast, closer than the others. Then: smell. Rich, heady. Blood pumping and whooshing through veins. Quick, fearful breathing. Prey, prey, prey. It’s close.

Too close. Closer than any prey has ever been. It waits, gathers itself, waiting.

Suddenly, the prey is _there_. The smell is pungent, overwhelming, intoxicating. The sounds of heavy breathing, the pounding heart, the _blood_.

It lashes out. Its claws dig into tender flesh, pricking skin, releasing the scent of blood into the air, and that’s _it._

It sinks its teeth into the prey’s neck and hot blood flows over its tongue and it’s so good, so good, so good. Rich and thick. It drinks and drinks and drinks, pulling blood from the prey’s veins, draining dry.

The prey screams and cries and struggles in vain, but as the blood flows out, the fight weakens. The prey is strong though, still holds on, still fights for rattling breath. Fights to speak.

He tightens his arms, tries to crush his prey, squeeze out more blood.

“ _Harry_ ,” Eggsy gasps.

A faint light of awareness pierces the red storm of his mind.

His name.

That’s his name. He’s Harry.

He retracts his teeth from Eggsy’s ravaged neck and suddenly, horrifically, _sees_.

“Harry,” Eggsy rasps, looking up at him with dull, pain-glazed eyes from a too pale face.

“No,” Harry croaks spilling a mouthful of blood from his mouth. It drips down his chin, dots Eggsy’s face in crimson. “No, no, no, no, no.”

“Ha….”

“Eggsy. Oh no. Eggsy.” He crushes Eggsy’s limp body to him, clings to him desperately, willing him to come back, to not leave him, not again. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Oh god. Oh god. Eggsy, I’m so sorry.”

“Eggsy.”

“ _Eggsy._ ”


	2. Chapter 2

“ _Ow_ —shit!” Eggsy doesn’t even feel the bite at his neck until he sees a line of bright crimson blooming beneath his jaw. As the chemicals from the shaving foam seep into the open wound, it starts to bloody _sting_. Serves him right, he supposes, for having to rush this morning.

He hastily sets down the razor and rinses away the offending foam with a wet flannel to examine the damage. Not too bad. Just a small knick that would eventually stop bleeding on its own, but for good measure, he rummages around the shelves of the loo and sources a sheet of small, circular plasters that were likely for this very occasion.

There. A little yellowing dot that still has some adhesive to it. The very innocuous appearance of it on his neck twists his mouth into a faintly amused smile. “Not so perfect were we either, Harry?” 

As if saying the name aloud breaks some sort of spell, Eggsy’s smile dissolves into a heavy sigh, and he gives his reflection an unflinching look. With half his face still wearing a white beard of foam, it’s easy to believe he’s become an old man if he squints. The lines beneath his eyes are deeper, the smudges darker, the bags more pronounced. It might have done him better to have attempted to grow a beard after all and at least mask some of the exhausted pallor that leeches his complexion.

“But a gentleman does not tolerate patchy facial hair,” Eggsy says aloud in his best imitation of Chester King, being sure to add a better-than-thou glare for authenticity. “To do so would be a sin worse than murder itself.”

In the company he keeps, that very well may be true.

He goes through the motions of the rest of his morning routine: finish shaving, soothe and moisturise, dab just a touch of cologne on each side of his neck. Harry’s cologne is something light and green, reminding Eggsy of the scent of rain, but Eggsy finds his personal chemistry does better with a hint more spice, so all of the various glass bottles and compacts of Harry’s personal grooming supplies— _So much cover-up, how much trouble did you get into?_ —still sit dusty and untouched on the shelves, Eggsy’s meagre arsenal easily slotting into the few spaces that were left. His hair is straight and easily tamed to the way he has styled it for nearly a year now with only a little pomade. He gets dressed, wears the dark blue single button slim fit, opts for the black knitted tie in a half-windsor, and shines his oxfords until they gleam. When he is done, he slips the glasses over the bridge of his nose, picks the stale plaster off his neck, and looks at himself in the mirror that sits over the dresser to assess the final product, deeming himself to be perfect.

Just like yesterday. Just like he how will be tomorrow.

JB crowds him as soon as he emerges from the bedroom, collar jingling, toenails clicking across the floor, hooting at him as he treads a path of frantic circles around Eggsy’s feet. “Jesus, JB, one of these days, I’m gonna step on you,” Eggsy grumbles as he navigates the delicate dance with his dog, making his way across the landing and down the stairs. When Eggsy safely reaches the bottom without tumbling arse over teakettle, he has a brief staredown with the furry little beast who doesn’t break eye contact in submissiveness like all the bloody training manuals say he ought to be doing, one that at last ends in Eggsy, sighing, “Walkies?”

The very word sends JB into another fit of hooting so fierce, he throws his whole body backwards with it, as if Eggsy had just said he’d won the lottery. Of course, what did that mean to a dog when there was a whole wide world of intriguing urine-soaked fence posts to investigate or other doggy arses to sniff?

He puts JB on the lead and together they parade down the mews to Gloucester Road, dodging busy morning traffic to take a turn about the gardens, nodding to every familiar face of the neighbourhood while Eggsy quietly urges JB to be a little less inquisitive and do his business a little faster. People are a lot more desperate for interaction these days, like they need to reaffirm their civility after trying to bludgeon each other to death only a few months ago, but they’re busy people, him and JB. Lots to do. No time to stay and have a chat, after all, especially to people who once knew Harry, who only know Eggsy as _the late Mr Hart’s son_ , which grates on Eggsy’s nerves to no end, but he can’t argue the assumption without entrenching himself in a longer, more involved conversation he doesn’t want to have. For once, JB is sympathetic to his mood, re-marking his territory at record speed and uncomplicatedly defecating in a little bed of Goldsturms within five minutes. Eggsy bags the goods, dumps it in the nearest bin, and it’s off to the shop they go.

“Merlin is in the dining room, sir,” Andrew says as Eggsy crosses the shop floor, JB propped on his hip, just a little too big to be doing so now.

“Cheers, Andy,” Eggsy replies, not pausing until he’s at the very bottom of the back stairs, pivoting on his heel. “Say, what mood do you think guv’s in today?”

Andrew doesn’t even look up from where he is winding up a bolt of pinstripe fabric. “I believe it’s the same mood he’s always in, sir.”

“So you’re saying I should watch my back, yeah?”

“I say no such thing,” Andrew sniffs. “It’s not as if you would listen to me anyway.”

“What can I say?” Eggsy grins. “I like to live dangerously.”

“I can scarcely believe it,” comes the dry reply.

Eggsy laughs a little before turning back to his prime objective once more, up the stairs two at a time, through the ornate dining room doors (he never knocks, still) with a forcefully chipper, “Good morning, Merlin!” to plant himself in Harry’s chair, just to the right of the head position.

His chair, that is.

“Galahad,” Merlin greets with not nearly the same level of enthusiasm, and one quick glance tells Eggsy plenty. Merlin looks about as well-rested as Eggsy feels and he never had the temperament to fake otherwise. There are already several browser tabs lined up on his tablet as he opens his mouth to launch right into it. “As you can—”

“Oh, hold on a tick,” Eggsy interrupts like it’s just occurred to him. He sets JB down on the floor before rifling through the rucksack he’s brought with him. He pulls out an empty shallow food bowl and sets it on the ground at his feet, then empties a small plastic bag of pre-portioned kibble into it, which JB noisily attacks as soon as Eggsy’s removed his hands.

Merlin’s gaze bores into him, but he chooses not to say anything, returning his focus back onto the file in front of him before continuing. “As I was saying, we’ve—”

“Just another mo,” Eggsy interrupts again, retrieving another shallow bowl and setting it down on the floor next to its twin. A sealed bottle of water emerges from his sack and half its contents are poured into the empty dish. “There we are,” Eggsy croons at JB who is too busy inhaling his food to preen. “Who’s a good doggy? Who?” And off Merlin’s unimpressed look, “What? You was the one who called for the early start. Didn’t have time for breakfast, did we, JB?”

“Are you finished?” Merlin asks with exaggerated consideration. “Have all of JB’s needs been adequately seen to?”

“Yes, we’re good, thank you,” Eggsy tells him with his most insincere smile, settling back into his chair with proper posture and all.

Merlin narrows his eyes and tightens his lips, looking like he had the one time they ever got drunk together, which had been about a week after V-Day, running down the exhaustively long list of things they had to do in the wake of global chaos. Merlin had studied Eggsy with that same face for a very long time before declaring, apropos of nothing, “You two _are_ alike,” but it had, for some reason, made perfect inebriated sense at the time, and Eggsy hadn’t questioned it, had even mostly forgotten about it until just now.

Eggsy peers back at him innocently, knowing he’s testing Merlin’s limited patience, but something in him keeps driving him to it, probably the part of him that has never got on well with authority.

“As I was saying,” Merlin gamely continues, “I called this meeting because we’ve received word from one of our informants in Moscow asking for a meet. Given the current state of the world, I am not inclined to ignore the request.”

The portrait above the fireplace pitches black, the haughty visage of Kingsman’s first Arthur abruptly replaced by the record mirrored on Merlin’s tablet. “Rozalina Sergeyevna Markova, aged forty-seven. She inherited her father’s petroleum empire fifteen years ago, which has since made her one of the wealthiest people in Russia. Never married. No children. She survived V-Day and moved several rungs up the social ladder by virtue of the fact forty percent of her compatriots and most of the Kremlin had their heads blown up.”

Eggsy only passively absorbs the basic facts Merlin utters, wielding most of his focus on the headshot included in the file. Rozalina is blonde-haired and though it’s hard to see by the monochrome image itself, the _Eye Colour_ field next to her countenance confirms her eyes as blue. She’s attractive in a way that is soft and graceful rather than stunning, younger in appearance than her age would peg her, features only lightly lined with age: her eyes are large, giving her an expression that appears perpetually surprised, her nose is straight and a touch too long, her lower lip a touch too full to be completely proportionate to her mouth, her chin is clefted. He suspects she is frequently underestimated and has used that to her advantage to have come so far in the heavily patriarchal world she must move within.

“She used to be run by Harry,” Merlin says, which successfully tears Eggsy’s attention from Rozalina to Merlin himself, feeling like someone’s gone and punched him in the gut.

After a few long moments of sluggishly absorbing this new fact that throws every preceding bit of data about her into a new light, Eggsy says, “Did he—” He stops, closes his mouth, tries again, calmer. “How did she know him as?”

“She knows he’s not MI6 and hasn’t inquired further beyond that,” Merlin says, studying Eggsy a little too intently. “But she’s been happy to supply us with information about what transpires in the Russian government and upper echelons over the last decade.”

That seemed a little too simple, though admittedly he’s not given to feeling charitable towards her right now. “Why?” Eggsy asks. “What’s in it for her?”

“Politically, she’s unambitious, but understood how precarious her position was under Putin. Officially, she maintains a neutral stance in all matters of politics. Unofficially, she does her part in maintaining as many checks and balances as she can and sees this act as one of the many ways in which to do so.”

 _Self-preservation_. Eggsy can already hear Merlin’s implicit words, but there were far less riskier ways of accomplishing that. Quiet defiance, maybe. He’d know a thing or two about that. And yet even understanding a motivation so simple didn’t sit all the way right with him. He had said and done things that would most certainly qualify as _risky behaviour_ because he had nothing to lose, surely Markova didn’t have that particular _luxury_.

“You’re to rendezvous with Markova at an evening gala General Petrov is hosting tomorrow night in Moscow and find out what she has to say. Her information has always been of significant interest to Kingsman and she’s never once abused her connections,” Merlin says. “And it’s a good time to start building one of your long-term aliases, I think.”

Harry had born Henry DeVere in the early 80s and it had served him well for over twenty years, accruing a whole history of its own that at last concluded on V-Day, dying like so many others in his set. Tomorrow night, Eggsy would premiere Edward Langer, an emboldened and resilient young man who represented the latest generation of new money after his parents had died on V-Day, leaving their vast fortune to him. It would help to cover all the gaps and cracks in Eggsy’s own unpolished education, and it was hoped that together, he and Edward would smooth out their rough edges through the forthcoming years of Eggsy’s Kingsman career. Markova, however, would come to know him as something more, just as she had done Harry. Had, in fact, probably known Harry for far longer than Eggsy had himself, even if it was only what Harry chose to show to her.

He finds himself irrationally, helplessly jealous.

“She’ll undoubtedly be expecting Harry. She may not open up to me,” Eggsy says, frowning as he continues reading through her background. Typical wealthy upbringing. Highly educated. Studied at Oxford. Spoke five languages. An award-winning equestrian. Regularly donated to several charities, legitimate (Médecins Sans Frontières, Against Malaria Foundation) and not (General Petrov’s non-profit, for one).

“She may not have a choice if she’s reaching out first. That’s why you need to work this carefully. Your briefing packet will have the exchanges you need to engage her.” Merlin raises his brows, giving Eggsy a deadpan look. “The rest is up to you and your questionable charm.”

 

_____

 

It’s cold enough in Moscow to freeze his bollocks off, cold enough tonight to give way to a soft sigh of a storm whose snowflakes lazily drift towards the ground in swirling waltzes. From within the overheated confines of Petrov’s mansion, Eggsy can even appreciate the solemn aesthetic of snow-glazed rooftops, window ledges, and pavement. But then, he’s always been entranced by that particular sort of cold, stark beauty.

The mansion of the acting leader of Russia achieved a tastelessness that only extreme wealth could enable: marble inlaid floors with gold, deep red walls that defied subtlety, Petrine baroque embellishments anywhere there was an inch of space to spare, ornate marble and gold tables, a proliferation of sculptures, including a life-sized taxidermy brown bear, rumoured to have been personally killed by Putin himself, standing on its hind legs, mouth permanently wired open in postmortem menace. The grand fireplaces had all been lit in spite of the stale heat being pumped through the vents, cultivating a sweltering climate that steamed up the windows, flushed pale cheeks, and made foreheads glisten with perspiration.

Currently, the main ballrooms were filled with what was left of Russia’s elite, those who snubbed Valentine’s overtures out of a proud loathing for the West than necessarily concern for possible genocide, as well as those who had profited from the aftermath of V-Day to gain entrance into their ranks. Even then, the sheer scale of the ballrooms dwarfed those in attendance, making the party seem like a sparsely attended fundraiser for an unpopular candidate than the overindulgent fête of those with power who were jockeying for more. The subzero temperatures outdoors had begun to look more appealing as the night wore on.

Eggsy has been carrying on all night two-fisting champagne flutes like a wanker, one half empty, as he has understood the greeting protocol to be. So far he’s managed to have mangled conversations in Russian with a fish tycoon and some sort of notable architect who almost bored him to tears whilst rambling on about the ceiling mouldings, but no Markova in sight. He’s run into several minor military officers and then some not-so-minor ones, but at least with the glasses he always has a ready-made excuse of needing to bring drinks back to his date. If only he could bloody find her.

“I’m sorry I’m late. The dog was very sick,” says a lightly accented female voice as Eggsy feels a slender arm slip through his, one flute plucked from his fingers. When Eggsy turns his head, he’s both relieved and annoyed to learn that Markova has found him.

She’s shorter than he would have thought, shorter even than him, but she’s every bit as lovely as her headshot had suggested, more so, really, because it’s the sort of loveliness that Eggsy both envies and loathes: effortless. Her hair is silvery blonde, almost white. Her eyes are more sorrowful grey than blue, like a sky over London; her blood red dress makes her skin seem even more pale. It’s youthfully smooth, less lined than Eggsy had thought. She smells like sweet aged ambergris, which Eggsy could only identify because Roxy had let him smell some once. “A shame. But he’s a hearty breed. I’m sure he’ll pull through.”

She smiles, closed-mouth, at him, her body subtly leaning into his as they slowly cross the room, all very suggestive of two close acquaintances who are comfortable with each other. She’s very good, he realises. “I’m sorry for not having approached sooner. You are not who I was expecting to see tonight.”

“My name is Edward Langer. Our mutual friend,” Eggsy says, taking a moment to swallow because the words keep sticking in his throat, “Wasn’t fortunate enough to have made it through V-Day.”

“Oh,” Markova says, and Eggsy finds himself studying her reaction intently. There is genuine shock, a flash of hurt, before it is expertly smoothed back into a more practised steady expression. “I am...I am very sorry to hear that. I had considered him a friend.”

 _You were just an asset_ , Eggsy wants to say, and he’s sort of appalled that that’s his first instinct. He’s a better professional than this. “As his colleague, I was asked to go in his place when you made contact. I hope this hasn’t changed things.”

Markova doesn’t immediately answer, which is somewhat worrying. There’s a small furrow to one finely groomed brow, another micro-expression too fast to name, before she says, “I...no. No, it does not change things,” she repeats as if to reaffirm matters for herself. “I think we should go somewhere quieter to speak, less stuffy, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say no.” He tries to be diffident, but he’s relieved to be leaving most of these twats behind lest they inadvertently get pulled into more small talk he has to struggle to make sense of. She leads him through a smaller sitting room, and then into a dining area where a long buffet has been set up, offering various lukewarm silver basins of ambiguous shapes floating in gravy.

“We are not noted for our cuisine,” Markova remarks when she sees Eggsy’s less than impressed look and then releases his arm to deposit her untouched champagne on the table, trading it for a stolen tray of hors d'oeuvres that some waiter is probably going to later worry about losing and, after a few words with one of the bar attendants and some surreptitiously slipped notes, an entire bottle of vodka. “Come,” she tells him when she’s gathered her loot. “This will do, no?”

In spite of himself, Eggsy is beginning to like her.

Up one wide staircase towards the back of the mansion and soon they find themselves in a semi-private alcove with banquet seating, a dosen elaborate throw pillows and a window that can be opened to let in some blessedly frigid air.

Markova plops down on a cushion, kicks off her heels, and hikes up the length of her dress in order to draw one leg up on the seat. “Have you ever tried caviar?” she asks him as she sets down the tray on the cushion between them. On it sits a tin of the stuff, black and oily, surrounded by a sea of toasted crackers.

“Can’t say I have,” Eggsy admits, though he also can’t say he isn’t curious about the food befitting posh folk, so when Markova waves her hand at the tray, he spoons a bit of it onto a cracker and pops it into his mouth.

Markova watches his face with transparent amusement. “Well?”

“Like…” Eggsy impolitely says through his full mouth, but it’s hard to keep from spewing it all out, much less chewing it enough to be able to swallow. “Like fishy marmite jelly.” And then, after reflecting on whether or not he’s gone and stepped in it, he adds, “Uh, I suppose it’s an acquired taste.”

“One could say the same for your marmite.” It makes her laugh as she twists open the vodka and holds out the whole bottle to him. “Here. This will help wash away the taste.”

Eggsy is far too desperate to worry about manners or propriety as he grabs the neck of the bottle and takes a burning but palate-cleansing swig. “Caviar and vodka. I thought this was all just a cliché.”

“Some clichés are true,” she says, grey eyes glittering with mirth. “Not you, maybe. You’re supposed to be the dashing British gentleman spy, but you’re still new, aren’t you?”

It should be embarrassing to be so easily read, but her tone is one of gentle curiosity rather than derision. “I’m...yeah. You could say that. It’s not been even six months.”

“Since...V-Day as well,” Markova notes with far too much astuteness, and the merriment gradually fades from her eyes like a burned out candle. She hesitates, but something weighs on her mind, and Eggsy dreads to hear it because he knows what it will be. “Can you just tell me this? Can you just tell me whether he died from having his head blown up or…?”

_Sounds good to me._

_Well, this ain’t that kind of movie._

Eggsy is frequently shoved back into a state of waking to the thunderous sound of that gunshot, usually at too early an hour, sweaty, panting, heart pounding, the taste of bile at the back of his throat making him gag. He won’t sleep for the rest of the night, just lying in the middle of Harry’s big, empty bed, staring up at the white ceiling. “He was shot in the head,” Eggsy says, proud of the way his voice doesn't waver. “Trying to stop it all from happening.”

“Thank you.” There’s something darkly comical about being _relieved_ by just a mere bullet to the head, but Markova sighs and looks away, melancholy, but only a moment. “It may be silly, but I suppose I didn’t think he could even die, not after so long and so much.”

Harry had been like a well-oiled machine in the pub on that fateful day they met (at least, the one that Eggsy can remember). Nothing could touch him or even get past him, every blow deflected with the almost casual ease of flicking a speck of dust off one’s shoulder. Eggsy’s whole opinion of Harry had done a complete 180 then. Even in the church, Harry had been unstoppable, tearing through person after person with mindless savagery. It had been singularly awful, amazing, and frightening in turns, to the point where he hadn’t even worried about Harry being killed so much as for the other people who had the misfortune of being in his sight lines. “Me either.”

He surfaces from his internal musings long enough to realise Markova has been quiet this whole time, merely watching him. “Did you know him well?” she asks.

His lips part automatically. It’s on the tip of his tongue to say, _Yes_ , but he pauses, frowns. One could say he had known Harry for almost a year while he was training at Kingsman, but even then, the number of times he actually spent in Harry’s conscious company had been remarkably few, and not for very long besides other than the 24 hours they had been allotted. He didn’t really _know_ Harry. Not in the way Merlin must have or any number of other agents at Kingsman (the ones left, that is). He couldn’t say what Harry’s favourite film was or his favourite food. He didn’t know any of Harry’s secrets or greatest fears or inner desires. For all their relationship had officially been handler and asset, Harry and Markova must have collectively spent more time in each other’s presence over the years than Eggsy ever had and would.

And yet he’d been so torn up when Harry died, like the world had really ended at the moment Valentine squeezed the trigger and the feed from Harry’s glasses had suddenly cut to static and then the final _Signal Lost_. He had been trying this whole while not to even think about the profound emptiness that seemed to exist in his life now, always pushing it to the periphery of his thoughts, because he doesn’t know what would happen if he looked at it head on.

If he knew anything about Harry at all, it was by that breathless absence, the way he had stamped himself onto Eggsy’s life, bringing with him all his expectations and demands and beliefs and hope, forcing Eggsy to accommodate him, to change. “In some ways,” is what he finally settles on before taking another large swallow of vodka. It feels like the most honest answer he could possibly give.

“Me too,” Markova says, wistful, and Eggsy thinks he understands her more now. “He was a very good dancer. I used to make him meet me for dances first, then talk. He got very annoyed with me. I don’t think he liked dancing as much as I did. There’s not so much dancing nowadays, although they have a nice twelve-piece orchestra tonight. Do you dance, Edward? Would you care to do so, later?”

“If you’re looking for another accomplished dancer, I am not it.” It makes him think about the one and only time he had any practise with formal dancing. _The second rule of being a gentleman_ , Harry had said, _is how to dance_. A simple waltz to start, but after four martinis, it had all been a bit of a shit show regardless. Harry’s hand at his waist, cool hand enveloping his, trying to lead him through the steps first, then get Eggsy to lead _him_. He’d been unsteady, more drunk than tipsy, and Harry had been a tall, solid wall so close to him that Eggsy could barely concentrate much less keep time in his head, stumbling over his own two feet again and again. _Well_ , Harry had remarked with a little more forced optimism after they gave up, _I suppose there will be more time for practise later_. The assumption being after he won the Lancelot title and became Harry’s actual colleague instead of his replacement. “Or him.” Eggsy had Harry’s code name and house, and now he is running his assets, but he is a rather poor replacement in all respects.

“That would be unfair of me,” she says simply before idly smoothing out a few wrinkles in her dress before they could have a chance to set. “And anyway, I am not interested in replacing him. I think you would agree that such a thing would be impossible.” 

“What interest did you have in him?” Eggsy asks before he can stop himself. It’s the question he’s wanted to know since he first heard her name and saw her face, because as much as he wants to take an objective stance to it, he just _can’t_. There had been something there, he didn’t know what it was, and there was no damning evidence to which he could point to prove his suspicions, but he felt it with every ounce of his being, akin to the surety and confidence he had in his own body when he leapt from building to building back on London's streets.

If she’s affronted by his directness, she doesn’t betray it. Instead, her features settle into a deep sort of thoughtfulness, like she’s giving his question serious measured thought before she finally speaks. “Do you know the story of how we first met?” And when Eggsy shakes his head, that, no, it hadn’t been a part of the briefing for this mission (or if it had, it had been only as a footnote pointing to about five hours of more reading, which he hadn’t bothered to do), she elaborates. “I was kidnapped by men my father’s rivals had hired. They hoped to force my father to sign a bad deal in exchange for my return, but they overestimated my father’s love for me. He would not yield to their demands. When they realised he would not give in, they tried to get rid of me by selling me to slavers. It was Henry who broke up the ring and rescued me. I think his mission was the ring itself, not me specifically.”

A sinking feeling curdles his stomach. He ears burn with shame at his own presumptions, his own pettiness, and his own shameful past. Harry, ever the white knight, saving a kidnapped girl from what surely had to have been a harrowing experience versus bailing a snarling young punk out of jail for car theft.

“It was after that experience I learned how dangerous the world was that I inhabited, and that no one would protect me from it,” Markova says. “Save maybe one man, once. But I suppose, now, not anymore.”

Eggsy wants to reassure her that Kingsman would honour Harry’s relationship with her, that she would remain under their protection so long as she could still provide them with valuable intel, but it sounds too heartless, too cold. He has the feeling Harry would have protected her no matter what, regardless of whether she could still be valuable. _If you save a man’s life, you are responsible for him._ “Why did you want to meet with him?” he finally asks. “It’s been almost five years since you last made contact.”

Down to business, they are now. Even Markova senses the change in tone and does not fight it. If she is to show she is willing to continue trusting the organisation Harry had worked for, now is it. “There have been rumours of more Valentine technology being offered up for sale. That some of it had been smuggled out of the factories before they were destroyed. The generals were talking about putting in a bid. It’s the ultimate deterrent, no?”

Eggsy has to force another swallow of vodka past his dry, closed-up throat. Because it couldn’t ever be that easy, could it? Save the world, rescue the princess, go home and call it a day. Real life was infinitely messy where the best solutions were the ones that created the least amount of other problems down the line. “Do you have any idea who’s doing the selling?”

“They are running out of Berlin, I think,” Makova says. “Trying to sell to governments first, like they think that is being responsible. I am still trying to find a name.”

“I...you should be careful,” Eggsy says lamely, too little, too late.

But Markova only smiles, gently, like she appreciates the gesture all the same.

 

_____

 

It’s gone on three in the morning by the time the Kingsman taxi pulls up to the mews. Eggsy barely keeps himself from falling out of the vehicle as he bids the driver good night and drags his body up the quiet lane to Harry’s house with only thoughts of falling into bed and sleeping for as long as his mind will let him. He’s so tired, he thinks he may not even dream.

The house is equally silent and dark. JB is still at the kennels. The sad, musty smell of absence permeates the air and Eggsy knows if he were to run his finger over almost any surface other than perhaps one small section of the kitchen counter where he prepares JB’s meals, the sideboard where he pours his drinks, and the chair in the sitting room where he drinks them, it would come away with dust. He hasn’t allowed cleaners to come ever since he moved in, hasn’t, in fact, touched or disturbed very much about the house at all. It’s not healthy, he knows, though he’s argued he’s been so busy setting the world to rights he hasn’t had much time left over to play house. He also knows he’d probably feel more ownership towards the place if only he actually went in and made it his own, but remains circuitously paralysed by the thought he hasn’t the right because it still doesn't feel like his house.

Once he steps through the doorway, his exhausted brain turns traitor on him and suddenly becomes too wired to sleep, so he performs his nightly ritual of shedding his suit jacket, toeing off his shoes, loosening his tie, and fixing himself a drink, which is to be enjoyed in the one chair.

It’s when enough quiet has pooled in his head that he begins to reflect on the house itself. It’s a very cosy house when examined objectively. It wasn’t a Chelsea postcode. It wasn’t overly large and intimidating. It wasn’t even necessarily that modern. He’s read in the deed that Harry had purchased it in the nineties and renovated it exactly twice since, the last being nearly ten years ago.

The personal effects, though.

The first two times he’d ever been in Harry’s house, he’d mostly been too preoccupied to really notice his surroundings (yeah, some spy he turned out to be). Too dazzled by the man, then too drunk, then too hungover, then too furious, then too devastated. Things grew clearer, fuzzy impressions taking solid shape, in subsequent visits like dissipating fog: the eccentric mixed decor that ranged from inane to bizarre (ugly landscape paintings, all the dead bugs, and of course, cherry on top of the strange sundae, Mr Pickle). The odd points of fussiness ( _tea cosies_ , Jesus). The antiquity (separate hot and cold taps in the master toilet, really, Harry?). The inexplicable (save for that one time he had served Eggsy a grand affair for breakfast, no food existed in the refrigerator or cupboards, not even tea for his absurd number of teapots, did Harry literally eat out for every meal?).

All of it added up to more questions than answers, but it wasn’t like Eggsy would be getting those soon, so he’s had to force himself to be content with not knowing. His Harry would always remain mostly a mystery, and the parts he did know were hoarded all the more jealously for it.

Harry, whose rare genuine smiles were always opened mouth, full of teeth. Outside of Kingsman in the privacy and comfort of this house, he had given Eggsy so many of them.

Harry who had a mole below his left nostril that he often tried to minimise the appearance of, but once Eggsy had noticed, he could never _not_ notice.

Harry, who always achieved a stillness so thorough that if Eggsy didn’t look at him while in the room, he’d have sworn he was alone in it.

 

_____

 

Merlin is, as expected, equal parts dismayed to learn of more V-tech surfacing and frustrated that, until Markova can give them more information, there’s little he can do other than continue the arduous process of delving into V-Corp’s complicated network of shell companies and tens of thousands of personnel records, all while keeping on top of other developing situations all over the world.

In the meantime, Eggsy is sent to Columbia to put a stop to some stubborn FARC remnants wanting to mount another go, Nigeria to assist in a push against the last holdouts of Boko Haram, then Macau to gamble while surveying a few would-be terrorist funders. He and Roxy get to team up in Yemen for a spot of trouble, and between the two of them, or really, Roxy’s incredible competence, the mission is wrapped up in half the time expected, so Eggsy can go home and even make it to mum’s Sunday roast as well as wear a complimentary rhinestone tiara while simultaneously offering up free pony rides for Daisy’s Princess-themed birthday party. It had been worth the subsequent back pain and the undoubtedly hundreds of cellphone pictures that were to be used as blackmail against him at a later date.

All in all, it’s not a bad life. He’s working hard to be a whole new person, a better one, the kind of person Harry had thought he could be. He’s learning to enjoy a life made possible by Harry but without Harry in it. The guilt recedes a little more each day. The sharp edge of longing dulls and no longer cuts his breath short with such stinging immediacy.

Markova comes through before Merlin can get to the bottom of it by early January: Gabriel Stieber, a fairly established black marketer working in Central and Eastern Europe who saw his star rise in the aftermath of V-Day.

“We’ve put out feelers to set up a meet,” Merlin tells him at their next briefing. “You’ll be representing the British government, willing to pay handsomely to keep these weapons out of the hands of other less-Western friendly nations.”

Not altogether dissimilar from the truth, which would excuse more of Eggsy’s own greenness. He appreciates the way Merlin looks out for him like that, especially when there’s so precious little time in between missions to catch up and learn. All he’s really got to do here is brush up on his posh talk, act like he’s better than everybody in the room, and Bob’s your uncle.

But Merlin surprises him next when he says, “I’d like to take this time to also let you know I’ll be travelling for a few weeks and communication may be sparse.”

Eggsy blinks, because what Merlin’s saying pretty much amounts to _I’ll be taking this machete and chopping off my limbs_. “Why?”

“I need to follow up on something that requires my personal attention. I understand it’s not the most ideal time to do so, but I’m afraid it can no longer be put off,” Merlin replies, daring him to question his not-very-informative answer.

Not that it would stop him, just like Merlin could look him dead in the eye, stone faced, and menacingly dare him to approach and whisper in his ear. Eggsy had been more attitude than, say, _wisdom_ back then, but nowadays he’s 100% certain Merlin cares for him. Well, 90% certain. But what gives him pause is how tired Merlin looks. Shattered, even. Existentially exhausted. It’s more than the lines on his face or the more pronounced circles beneath his eyes, it’s the long line of his mouth drawn downwards, the eternal slump of his shoulders, the dimmed light in his gaze. His biting commentary contains either too much teeth or sometimes none at all, and while Merlin could hardly be called emotionally sensitive at the best of times, he had always been able to read a situation correctly and navigate a dry but appropriate response.

So Eggsy holds his tongue on all the nosy, prying questions he wants to voice and instead asks, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Yes,” Merlin says, looking relieved to not have to fight a battle he’d clearly been expecting. “You can try not to blow anything up in my absence.”

 

_____

 

Eggsy gets into Berlin a whole day early to meet up with Amelia at a cafe whose walls are liberally covered in East Berlin graffiti, the first time he’s seen her since thinking she had drowned in a dormitory full of water, and it goes a long way towards easing the haunting image of her drenched, lifeless body sprawled across the wet floor.

“Sorry about that,” Amelia apologises, having the grace to look genuinely regretful for the ruse. “The foreign stations have all got to draw straws every time a new group gets in and I came up short.”

She’s dressed like a white-collar business worker in a staid black skirt and jacket ensemble, paired with an equally demure white blouse. Ever since the wall came down, Kingsman’s Berlin outpost has been nestled within a modernist block of concrete in Alexanderplatz and they all come in and out assuming the guises of common office drones with some unusually dedicated hours. “We can’t all have sprawling English countryside manors,” Amelia told him with a laugh when Eggsy remarked upon it.

“I’m just glad you’re really alright,” Eggsy tells her now. “And that I’m one of the few who ever gets to know that.” Which is sad think about: most of the recruits go home with the damning knowledge their inattention had cost someone their life. Then again, from what he’s seen of those in his cohort, he isn’t sure they’ll let that weigh on them too heavily. If any of them made it through V-Day, that was.

“On the bright side,” Amelia tells him cheerfully, “It really reinforces the idea that Kingsman will hunt them and their loved ones down should they ever talk.”

Then it’s simply a waiting game to see if Steiber would bite and agree to a meet. Eggsy wishes he knew what was happening behind the scenes to lure Steiber in, something he’s been excluded from because it had to be manipulated at the highest levels of the government, but any time he asks the Berlin station’s staff for updates, they just give him an annoyed look and tell him it’s being handled, that he’s just got to wait. He tries to leave a message for Merlin, but it's just hitting a brick wall. Nobody at British headquarters will tell him where he’s gone. Even his newfound friendship with Amelia doesn’t get him further than a sympathetic look and, “These things can take time. And the bureaucracy’s a bitch.”

So he pretends that he’s pretending to be a clueless British tourist and dons a huge puffy parka, because he had no idea Berlin got so fucking cold. He snaps selfies in front of Brandenburg Gate to send to his mum. He tours Charlottenburg Palace and both the Berlin and French Cathedral. He walks around the Gendarmenmarkt and catches a truly lovely performance of the Konzerthausorchester even though he couldn’t say what was performed or who it was by. He attempts to call Merlin again, more out of a desire to annoy than to gain any more information. He starts to hate his hotel room. He’s on a first-name basis with the concierge. He spends the first half of another week scouring the Nikolai Quarter and the last half at Museum Island. He eats far too much spaghettieis than should be allowed.

By the time he’s flirting with Type II Diabetes, he finally gets his meeting at Mutschmanns for Thursday evening. Amelia smirks at him when she gives him the details, and he finds out why when he gets past the queue and steps into a sea of men in scraps of leather and vinyl fetish wear, but mostly, nothing at all. It’s already cloyingly hot. His nostrils are assaulted with the scent of sweat, musk, and semen. He has to squeeze between various sweaty bodies and withstand many copious gropes to find a spare bit of room at the bar just to _breathe_ , fucking hell.

He downs half a bottle of bitter in one go and tries to locate Steiber in the barely lit room among all the writhing bodies. For once, Harry was wrong: Eggsy certainly did look out of place here in a bespoke suit, but he pretends not to notice his state of overdress—in the most literal sense of the word—as he fends off a few heavy handed come-ons from hopeful one-night suitors who would have been 100% more clothed if Eggsy had given them only his tie to wear.

Steiber slides into the increment of space beside him and grins rather unpleasantly when Eggsy almost tells him to fuck off out of reflex. He has a face like someone had pulled on it when it was more elastic and malleable, and it had been stuck that way ever since: long face, long nose, big mouth, pointy chin. The hair that grew in the advance of his receding hairline almost sticks straight up. “Spot the British pen-pusher in the room.”

Eggsy just glares at him. “Charming. You’re late. I thought that wasn’t in the German character.”

“We can’t all live to type. What?” Steiber asks with an air of innocence as he throws a glance around the club. “Not to your tastes? I did make an effort.”

“I’d prefer to speak somewhere more quiet, for one.” Eggsy sniffs and curls his mouth into one of barely concealed disdain, envisioning Chester King’s face all the while.

“Then let’s step into my office, shall we?”

Steiber pushes his way through the throngs and Eggsy has little choice but to keep up, following him directly into the gents where the techno music is only marginally less loud and into a tiny cramped cabinet that is decidedly sticky across every surface. They are nearly chest to chest, forced to breathe each other’s air. On either of side of them is the additional soundtrack of groaning and the indecently wet noises of men in various states of copulation. The walls rhythmically rock with it.

“Shall I get on my knees?” Steiber asks. “It would make the act more convincing.”

“You know why we’re both here,” Eggsy whispers, still keeping his voice low, which unfortunately means he’s got to lean even closer into Steiber’s space.

“Sadly, yes. And a shame too. I’ve never met a spook so young or handsome as you.” Steiber leers at him, daring to run a trailing hand down Eggsy’s chest that gets slapped away. 

“I want to purchase every piece of V-tech you’ve got. We would even pay double the amount of any other bid. It’s in Her Majesty’s interest these things don’t fall into the wrong hands.”

“That’s not very fun for us. My client isn’t interested in letting one government stack the odds.”

“Client?” Eggsy asks, briefly confused, before accusing, “I thought you had the tech yourself.”

“God, no,” Steiber laughs, giving Eggsy a firsthand taste of his stale breath. “I’m just a middle party. My clients do not want to be bagged and tagged to live out the remainder of their days in some unmarked black site.”

“How do I know I can trust this client of yours?”

“He helped create the technology behind the V-Day massacre,” Steiber says, then grows amused at Eggsy’s continued look of consternation. “What, you think Valentine worked alone? Of course not. That kind of research takes several years and a whole team to advance. I imagine most of them went the way of the implants, but this one claims he refused and left the company before he wouldn't have had a choice.”

Eggsy grinds his teeth for lack of anything else to say. It’s not like giving into the temptation of throttling the man will change the situation. Of course matters have to be more complicated than they ought, that it wouldn’t be a simple open and shut case of search and destroy. What Steiber implies means not only have they got to track down all the existing tech to destroy, but now they’ve got the track down and detain anyone from V-Corp who could possibly recreate it.

He allows himself the luxury, though, of grabbing two handfuls of Steiber’s sweat-dampened shirt and yanking him close to snarl in his face. “I want all of it. I don’t care what your client thinks of being fair minded. He just needs to name his price. Pass that on and let me know what the answer is. You may also want to tell him if he doesn’t give up the tech the profitable way, he _will_ find himself being hunted the extrajudicial way. Is that understood?”

For the first time, Steiber regards him with something more akin to fear, eyes darting, swallowing down his nervousness. “Sehr gut.”

Having done all he can for the time being, Eggsy unclenches his fingers and shoves Steiber back the scant centimetres he can before throwing himself out of the cabinet and narrowly avoiding colliding with the waiting queue of amourous couples, some of whom are impatient enough to forego the privacy altogether and have at it against the tiled wall.

He needs to inform Merlin of the increasingly complicated situation and get his new marching orders, but Merlin is out of contact, which leaves Eggsy pretty much fucked and clueless either way.

What would Harry do in a situation like this? Eggsy wonders, but almost immediately knows the answer.

 

_____

 

Eggsy admits that getting totally wasted at the hotel bar is not the _best_ decision he could have made under the circumstances, but it is absolutely, without a doubt, the most satisfying. But fucking hell does he miss London, its pubs and roads and its mostly consistent architecture and Harry’s house and his family and Roxy and not having to be stuck in this hellish limbo for God knows how much longer. He didn’t think he’d ever feel homesickness, much less have the opportunity, but tonight’s setback has it hitting him like a fucking freight train.

He wants to go home. He’s a terrible spy.

He’s five, six maybe, drinks in on the finest liquor Kingsman’s company card can buy, bleary-eyed, head heavy, but feeling expansive, like he could float above the entire world, float all the way home even, when he succeeds in finding his room on the first try and even managing the electronic lock. The room itself, freshly cleaned and sanitised into daily impersonality, feels drab and sterile.

He crawls into the centre of his king-sized bed, curls himself into a ball, and falls into a heavy, booze-soaked slumber.

He doesn’t dream. As much as he’s longed to, Eggsy has stopped dreaming about Harry these days, not even the ones that end in nightmares. The only way to envision him is through invoked memories, and even then, they become fainter and fainter with each summoning. He’s starting to forget the precise curvature of Harry’s hair when it finally manages to defy its styling or the exact rich shade of brown of his eyes.

His waking this time, though, isn’t natural. Unconsciousness is sharply cut through by the shrill ring of his room phone on the bedside table, overly loud in the otherwise quiet of what has to still be the middle of the night or early hours of the morning at least. Eggsy groans and considers not answering, but his refusal won't make the noise stop.

He rolls onto his back so as to put the landline within reach, which is almost a mistake: his stomach rolls audibly and threatens to expunge the previous evening’s endeavours via his throat. He miserably swallows back the sour taste that floods his mouth and closes his eyes, willing himself to maintain control, and all the while the phone keeps ringing and reverberating inside his skull.

Blindly, his hand feels for the phone, knocking it off its cradle first before bringing it to his ear. “Yeah?” Even his voice is rough.

Instead of the clear, sharp tones of what he assumes will be Berlin station, he gets a burst of static, which makes him sit up in spite of the protesting dizziness. “Hullo?”

“—gsy! Thank fucking G—”

There’s more static. The voice sounds like it’s very far away, distorted, and Eggsy can barely tell who it is, but he hazards a guess. “...Merlin?”

“—stuck in…. _fucking snowstorm_... _fucking climate change_...won’t know….”

“Look, I can barely hear you, guv,” Eggsy says, trying to stop Merlin from parting with any more words that will only be lost over the lines. “Where the fuck are you even?”

“—mind. I don’t...time. So listen.”

There’s a deadly serious tone in Merlin’s voice. It’s the kind he uses sparingly, Eggsy knows, only when things are truly dire, which has fortunately not been often. Hearing it now, however, sends a cold chill down his spine that mingles rather poorly with his flushed and overheated skin.

“I...return to...—ingsman. No..ne else is...I need you to go...—el nine. I’ve managed to….long enough to...—cess.”

Level nine, Eggsy parses, which leaves him reeling, vision tunnelling in a sickening way. No one’s allowed down there save for Merlin himself. When once asked, Merlin said it had been built for things too dangerous for anyone else to know about, even Kingsman.

“Blood, Eggsy.” Merlin’s voice abruptly comes in as clear as crystal, like he were saying the words while sitting right next to him, and it's all the more disturbing for it. “I need you to gather all the blood bags in the leftmost refrigerator and deliver it through the drawer marked G-HH, do you understand?”

Yeah, Eggsy gets it, but no. No he fucking doesn’t understand. He’s still more than a bit drunk and isn’t sure he isn't still asleep. “What the fuck are you up to, Merlin? Blood? _Blood_?”

“I don’t have time to explain,” Merlin says, his voice too hard to even sound resigned. “I just need you to do it now.”

“I’m still in Berlin. There’s been a wrinkle in the plan. It isn’t—”

“We’ll deal with it later. Right now, Eggsy, you need to get back to Kingsman,” Merlin dismisses before another burst of static comes down the line and wipes away the clarity they were previously enjoying.

“Merlin? Still there? Merlin?”

“...ever you do, Eg—... _not_ open the do—”

“Merlin?”

“Blood, drawer...that’s i—”

“Merlin?” Eggsy tries again, but this time the static keeps going and Merlin’s voice does not emerge from it again until he hears the telltale click of a lost connection.

 

_____

 

Berlin isn’t exactly happy with his request for an immediate flight home on such short notice while smelling like a distillery, but when he invokes Merlin’s name, and without the ability to confirm with the man himself, they have no choice but to hop to it, waking some poor pilot from his probably hard-earned sleep and pumping him full of enough coffee to cart Eggsy’s arse off the continent. Eggsy can hardly blame them as he’s not quite willing to admit he isn’t sure he half-dreamt up the whole thing in a drunken stupour.

It’s a rough flight, hungover as he is, but at least it’s blissfully short, and Eggsy is only a little ashamed at how relieved he is to be back on English soil again. It's a skeleton crew in Kingsman's hangar at this time of night and there’s no one to greet him, which is just as well.

Some of the underground levels aren’t accessible from the main lifts, so Eggsy’s got to scout out the one closest to the handler bullpen, which draws no shortage of curious glances in his direction and even a few bewildered greetings. Eggsy tries to smile and nod his head like everything’s just _fine_ , like he’s supposed to be there, putting on a great show of looking busy to deter any notions towards small talk.

As soon as the lift doors close behind him, Eggsy presses the button for the ninth floor and leans back against the wall, closing his eyes to stave off the beginnings of a migraine taking root at his temples. It takes an embarrassingly long time for him to realise the lift isn’t actually _moving_.

“Fuck.” Biometric security. Eggsy opens his eyes and stares at the small black pane of glass that inputs the reading. Is this even real? Is he really going to do this? After several more moments of lingering reluctance, he finally lifts his palm to the glass and the whole screen lights up as it scans him.

Mostly, he’s expecting the thing to beep angrily at him and deny him access, in which case he could then sigh in relief and bugger off home, but his hopes are dashed when the light flips green and the lift shudders to life, beginning its descent. Fuck.

Level nine has low bunker-like ceilings, the bare minimum for lighting, and narrow corridors that lend an overall very chic, claustrophobic feel to the atmosphere, made more disturbing by the fact that Eggsy is completely alone on it.

It feels like he’s navigating through a maze, going down the same corridors again and again with only a few unmarked doors to differentiate them. All of them are locked, refusing to open to his palm print or retina scan. Gradually, his dread transforms into irritation. “What the fuck are you playing at, Merlin?” he mutters after being denied entry into yet another room.

When one finally gives way beneath his palm print, it takes him by such surprise that he’s left staring at the thing, blinking stupidly, until the lock re-engages and he has to scan his whole palm again.

The room itself turns out to be a sterile lab, almost boring in its ordinariness. There’s a long steel table at the centre. Another plain door book-ending the room. Countertops of scientific equipment and supplies that Eggsy can’t put name to. Sleeping computers. A sink with an eyewash station. A first aid kit hanging on the wall. Gas lines. A full hazardous chemical emergency shower in the corner. The industrial metal refrigerators against the far wall, just as Merlin said.

It’s not like Merlin would have had any reason to lie, but Eggsy is still surprised and disconcerted to find a whole refrigerator full of enough blood bags to make the British Red Cross weep.

Given how surreal his whole night has been so far, Eggsy can see no other sensible action but to follow instructions, gathering up as many bags as can fit in his arms, finding them to be unexpectedly heavy, and then wondering where the hell drawer G-HH is supposed to be. His kingdom for some clearer direction.

As it would happen, drawer G-HH turns out to have no connection to the drawers below the counters or any of the shelving units. Drawer G-HH is built into the fucking wall next to the other door, a smooth metal plate with a single thick handle and a stenographic sticker label. When Eggsy pulls it open, he discovers it to be not a drawer at all but a pass-through of some sort into the room beyond.

He deposits the bags into the tray and dutifully slams the drawer shut. It's when he pauses for a moment that the madness of what he's doing catches up with him.

What the fuck is this?

Before he has a chance to talk himself out of it, he pulls open the drawer again and pushes some of the bags out of way to try and get a glimpse into the room beyond.

All he can see are white walls and soft lighting. Another refrigerator against one wall. A telly hanging in the corner that's been set to CNN.

And then he sees the body on the floor.

It startles him so badly, he yelps and stumbles away, crashing into the table that becomes the only thing that keeps him standing upright. “Holy fuck. Holy _fuck_.”

He tries to calm down, breathing slowly, deeply, but Merlin’s keeping a _person_ down here, what the absolute buggering _fuck_?

Another peek through the pass through, this one more prepared, braced in almost clinical distance, lets him glean more detail. Eggsy thinks it’s a man. A very frail, decrepit, unmoving man in hospital scrubs. He thinks the man could very well be dead or close to it if Merlin’s urgency had been any indication.

Does he need transfusions? Is that what this is about? Maybe Eggsy’s too late, and the man can no longer do it himself. Maybe the man will die without help.

Fuck Merlin and his warnings. It’s the most certain thing Eggsy’s been of in months, to go to the door and shove it open with all his might, prepared to break it down if he has to. Surprisingly, it gives him no resistance at all so that he stumbles gracelessly through it into the next room.

The smell hits him first: decaying flesh. His eyes start watering; he’s gagging, his already shaky stomach threatening to lose it there and then. Jesus, the man’s been dead for days already. He’s too late.

He’s not sure what happens next, it’s too fast.

The world is upended in a blur of motion. His feet no longer meet the floor, his whole body is clamped into a crushing vice. He thinks his screams are echoing off the walls when he feels something sharp rend into his skin, tearing at his arms, his chest, his neck, but he isn’t sure, there’s too much snarling in his ears to hear it.

And that’s when the pain comes, rising to awareness like a bursting balloon, staggering amounts of it, horrendous agony flaring from his neck where something keeps pulling and pulling at him in immense, terrible sucking pressure.

His whole throat’s been torn open, he can feel how much it gapes wide, and it makes him want to scream again but he just chokes. Instead, wet gulping sounds fill the air, heavy and desperate. A continuous low, reverberating growling of something _not_ human. A gurgle bubbles from his own lips. Something is _drinking_ his blood.

A primitive animal instinct kicks up in him, energising him to begin a fierce struggle for survival. He’s a _Kingsman_. He’s killed and fought his way through hundreds of heavily armed men. He throws punches at his attacker, tries to grab onto anything his hands can find purchase, yanking and shoving, kicking out and against, but it’s like beating his fists against an immovable rock wall.

The fight leaves him. His limbs grow weaker. He can feel his life slipping away from him, replaced by a heavy exhaustion that weighs his body down like lead.

 _I’m dying_ , Eggsy realises with perfect clarity. He’s lost too much blood to even be terrified. Even the pain is a distant thing.

Instead, as the world grows darker and narrows in scope, he sees Harry, shining like a bright and bloodied beacon above him, and it’s not so bad if this is the last person he gets to see before he goes.

“Harry,” he tries to say, tries to smile, but he can’t really control anything in his body anymore, the sound is barely pushed past his numb lips.

Eggsy can’t really make out the expression on Harry’s face, just sees him open his mouth and hears incomprehensible murmurs. The tone of them, though, is anguished. Eggsy doesn’t understand why.

He wants to tell Harry not to be so sad. His family will be fine. Roxy is strong. Merlin will take care of them. It will all be okay.

He would rather, after all, be with Harry anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note we've moved into Explicit territory because that's just how I roll.

It happens one moment to the next, a light flickers, a spark flares, and then there is nothing. Mossy green irises that had been vividly alight are now dull. Eggsy’s ever-animated features, from the expressive arches of his brows to the fraught twists and turns of his mouth, slacken.

One moment there is life in Eggsy and the next, there is not.

Harry spends many, many moments staring, watching, stupidly waiting for it to come back. He tries to hold the gaping flaps of Eggsy’s throat closed. He cradles Eggsy against him though he is the furthest thing from the Virgin and there’s nothing inherently holy about the limp weight of Eggsy in his arms.

Death is not a stranger to his life. Harry had already been well acquainted with it at an early age: he’d been a very late in life baby, so his parents first, then various distant relatives and friends at a steady clip. In the RAMC, it had rushed in to fill the absence of all the lives that had slipped through his fingers. Kingsman agents personally deliver it to hundreds if not thousands of individuals throughout their careers even as it dogs their own heels. He himself has known it intimately as its transient guest, time and time again.

There are many deaths Harry regrets, but rarely are they ones he’s delivered. It’s not that he couldn’t go through his past kills and find those he would have done differently or even not at all had he a second chance. It’s just that he’s never had the patience to linger too long within the moral and ethical intricacies. To do so would lead to a certain loss of faith he could not afford.

Since he has been remade into the creature he is now, his relationship with death hadn’t really been altered. He still cleared rooms by cutting down bodies. It was just easier to perform the act itself and harder to resist the urge to relish his successes after. Who he already was before the change never really forced him to reflect on who he became, save but twice ever in his life.

This, now, would be the second: holding Eggsy in his arms, staining Eggsy with his own stolen blood, desperately willing Eggsy to wake up and rectify Harry’s mistakes.

The sounds that fill the room, the sounds that come from _him_ , aren’t the monster: they’re painfully, wretchedly human.

Looking back, his decision had probably been made long before he looked into Eggsy’s lifeless face and crushed his body to him in a tightened grip. It certainly hadn’t been a conscious one until a single word seized control of his mouth and instilled in him the desire to hurl it back into the universe.

“ _No_.”

No, death cannot have Eggsy just as it could not have Harry. This would not be the thing to separate them forever.

“No,” Harry repeats and then finds himself muttering it over and over like a chant as he carefully lays Eggsy’s body out on the floor amidst the sticky blood and hovers over him like a nervous bird. Hard to think too clearly, his thoughts move sluggishly through the sludge in his mind and they are frequently incomplete. He still needs more blood himself to return to fully functioning, but he’s only got one chance at this and he means not to waste it.

He has to think back to how he first died like this, try and remember the flash of teeth and claws, excavate the horror of his own flesh being torn through like paper, of being _consumed_. The way the carcass smothered him in his last gurgling, undignified moments, blood and brain matter and viscera dripping into his mouth and nose and the exposed open cavity of his chest.

He brings one pale arm to his mouth, a razor sharp incisor dragged down the length of it to gouge a deep crimson trench. Dark, viscous blood pools up along the crevice and runs rivulets down his skin. The sharp taste of rusting copper swells in his mouth. It hurts, it never _not_ hurts, but the pain serves to drag his thoughts out of the mire and hone his intent.

Harry presses his bloody arm against the open wounds of Eggsy’s neck, bearing the limb down like he’s trying to choke him. But he isn’t sure if even this is enough, and the uncertainty drives him into a rabid mania: repeatedly tearing into his own flesh, bleeding as much from his veins as he can, smothering Eggsy with it all, nose, mouth, throat.

Maybe that isn’t enough either.

He tears into Eggsy’s body too, ripping through the fabric of his suit, his shirt, drawing gashes along his arms, his chest, his flank, and lays himself out over Eggsy like a shroud, cheek to still chest, anywhere to let his own tainted blood mingle with Eggsy’s as if hoping to put back as much of it as possible.

“Please,” he says, though he doesn’t know to whom.

Beyond re-injuring his flesh until he’s soaked both himself and Eggsy in his old, dead blood, Harry doesn’t know what else to do. The loss of so much of that precious fluid makes his head spin, so he closes his eyes and anchors himself to the cooling body beneath him. The demand for more sustenance starts deep, from the cavern of his stomach up through his parched throat, until every fibre of his being aches and stretches each passing second into an infinite, torturous purgatory.

He can’t really remember how this goes anymore: when Eggsy will wake up, if he wakes up, if this will work.

After that, Harry loses pace of reality, seeing it only within the walls of his growing hunger: the blank white confines of his prison, and now Eggsy’s too. He only barely remembers to tear into his own skin every so often to keep bleeding, his body taking longer to repair itself each time, until he forgets to do that too. The lights do not flicker or burn out. The telly drones on in perpetual 24-hour news cycles. He hears a crickets’ chorus of heartbeats far, far away.

He doesn’t hear or sense Eggsy at all. 

When he opens his eyes, his vision is blurry, his breath hitching, wheezing almost, like he can’t get enough unnecessary air into his lungs, because he will always be alone in this world. Such is his curse.

Maybe it would be better to let himself sink into starved madness again if it meant not having the awareness to feel this extraordinary isolation. If it meant not having to feel this acute emptiness in more ways than one.

Harry turns his head, burrows his nose into the canyon between Eggsy’s ribs and tries to resist the ever present siren song of the blood bags in the drawer.

_Blood._

He abruptly rolls off of Eggsy’s body to sit up.

In the liminal existence between lives, Harry’s body existed in something like a state of hibernation, as if it knew it was too weak and had to conserve its energy. Only the promise of blood—nourishment—could reanimate it once more.

He’s only capable of crawling across the floor in short, jerky movements, but he retrieves as many bags that had been shoved through the pass-through as his shaking hands allow. The desire to tear into them, drink, and quiet the aching absence in his stomach is fierce and immediate. Harry can feel his elongated fangs cut through his gums in anticipation. But Eggsy needs it so much more, and that well of protectiveness that swells within him is strong enough to override his most basic and selfish instincts. When he inches along the floor back to Eggsy’s side and he has to use his teeth to tear into one of the bags, he wrenches the temptation away from his mouth so swiftly, several drops of blood slosh over the sides onto the floor.

Eggsy doesn’t even stir, but then, the blood is hardly as appetising as it would be when taken hot and fresh from a living source. Harry dips his fingers into it and at first tries to wave them beneath Eggsy’s nose to jumpstart his superior sense of smell. “Come on, come on.” When that doesn’t work, he pushes them past Eggsy’s purpling lips to run them over his rough, cold tongue. “Come on, come on, Eggsy. Come back to me.”

 _Please_.

Still, it’s a shock when an icy hand clamps onto his wrist.

Harry sucks in a sharp breath as Eggsy’s eyes fly open, wild and unfocused, as his mouth opens wider to suck in panicked amounts of air, and then his teeth snap down on Harry’s fingers, nearly biting them clean off.

Still, _still_ , Harry’s joy inures his nerves to all injury, his cry more happiness than pain. “Eggsy, Eggsy!” he finds himself babbling, palming his blood-streaked face, wanting to pull the boy close to him, but it’s like Eggsy doesn’t see or know him. He’s a writhing, growling, whining thing, hands scrabbling and Harry’s chest, then at the hand still holding the bag, until Harry all but thrusts the open end of it against Eggsy’s mouth.

It’s messy. More blood pours down Eggsy’s face than into his mouth, like Eggsy’s forgotten all sense of decorum or even common sense. But then, with the desperation of his actions, the way he obscenely and gluttonously swallows down the contents of the bag, Eggsy has. He’s an animal in the way Harry had been when he had first woken up, absent of higher reasoning, too hungry to think beyond the blood and getting as much of it as possible.

Harry cradles his head like a child, tipping the bag up to upend the last of its contents like a bottle until there’s nothing left and Eggsy knocks it out of his hand with an inhuman cry. It’s not enough, not nearly enough. Bereft of more blood, Eggsy tries to snatch up another bag, but Harry’s there first, latching onto his wrists and wrestling him back down to the floor.

“ _No_ ,” Harry has to say, tightening his grip, using his whole body to press Eggsy down. He can feel the way Eggsy bucks frantically beneath him, eyes only for the blood, snarls falling from his lips that turn into whines the longer Harry keeps him from what he needs. “We can’t have it all, Eggsy. We don’t have much and we don’t know when we’ll get more. We have to make it last. Eggsy. Eggsy, can you hear me?”

Eggsy’s only answer is a low, pained moan and one last defiant gnash of his teeth in Harry’s direction before he all but exhausts himself, fight leaving his limbs in the same disturbing manner as it had whilst struggling in Harry’s arms with Harry’s teeth at his throat.

This close, Harry can see how large Eggsy’s pupils are, how his nostrils flair with the scent of blood so tantalisingly close, how he uncontrollably smacks his lips and grinds his red-stained teeth in want of more. Harry sees and absorbs every flinch and strain, every dynamic movement, and marvels. Eggsy has been stolen from death and dragged back to him again. He’s rebirthed Eggsy into this world. His own potent blood powers through Eggsy’s veins and he can almost hear it calling out to the rest that still powers through his, like a river that wants to flow back into its maternal sea. The emotions running through him are strong and heady and he can’t truly identify them for any one thing other than a potent mixture of possessiveness, love, affection, awe, longing, fear. 

Harry doesn’t know if Eggsy can feel even half of what he’s feeling right now. If the blood in his veins sings to Eggsy as sweetly as Eggsy’s to him. Right now, Eggsy looks up and _through_ Harry, unseeing, the beast within him making his whole body weakly twitch as Harry pets him, tries to quell the continuous whine that rises from the back of his throat, and, unable to resist the sight and smell any longer for how starving he is, licks the drying, tacky blood from Eggsy’s skin and, beyond all shame now, what had fallen to the floor.

Eventually, it’s the damned beep and lock release of the refrigerator that draws Harry from his haze, makes him blink and remember where he is. A glance down at the still body beneath him has him panicking for a split second before Eggsy’s eyes slit open, gleaming, but the rest of him remains silent and unmoving, not even when Harry releases his iron grip on Eggsy’s wrist to stumble over to the refrigerator door and yank it open before the lock has a chance to re-engage.

He performs the labourious work of moving what bags remain to the fridge. Even with the small number, it takes three trips, dragging his body across the floor, panting. His skin feels extra tight, like he’s slowly being hollowed out, and he realises he can’t put off feeding for much longer or he will be reduced to as much a primitive state as Eggsy’s—and one of them has got to keep his wits.

With all the bags locked behind the stainless steel door of the refrigerator save but one, Harry falls against it with a heavy sigh, holding the precious blood in his trembling hands. Across the room, he catches Eggsy’s gaze rapt upon him and feels a sharp stab of guilt. “There’s nothing I’d like more than to drain the entire world for you that you may never go hungry again,” Harry tells him, voice weighed down by a terrible rasp even though he doubts Eggsy can understand him right now. “But I’m doing this for us both. I’m sorry.”

When his teeth rip into the bag, Harry doesn’t anticipate Eggsy’s swift attack, one moment lying prone across the floor, the next growling in Harry’s face, trying to rip the blood from his grip. Eggsy is immensely strong and fast. Against anyone else, Harry imagines he could tear a human body clean in two, to say nothing of what he could be once adequately fed.

But Harry instinctively knows rather than has to find out that he’ll always be stronger and faster. It only takes a swipe of his hand to bat Eggsy back down to the floor and keep him pinned, and no amount of furious struggling can change it.

“Stop it. Stay _down_ ,” he barks out, and to his eternal surprise, Eggsy does.

Eggsy’s limbs instantly grow lax beneath Harry’s hand and the growling ceases, but the canine-like begging in his eyes remains. It becomes obscene to tip his head back and swallow down mouthfuls of cold blood, trying to pace himself to make it last, but too hungry to even think about taking small sips, while Eggsy, his starving boy, relentlessly watches him, meekly solemn.

It’s too much to bear. Harry never had much restraint with Mr Pickle and absolutely none at all after shooting him to become Galahad. He certainly hasn’t got any with Eggsy now.

He reopens his wrist, barely healed after all the damage he’d committed upon it, and no sooner draws it close to Eggsy’s mouth in offering when Eggsy latches onto it with sharp teeth and cold hands, pulling the blood from his body in earnest.

There’s a sort of inappropriate erotic quality about it, the way Eggsy’s eyes flutter shut, the wet, slurping noises he makes, the inarticulate and subconscious moans, the pressure and constant lapping tongue at the sensitive skin of Harry’s inner wrist. It’s not that it feels necessarily _good_ to lose so much blood one cannot afford to lose—in fact, it’s very much opposite—but there’s something indulgent and deeply satisfying in personally satiating his own creation’s need, enough so that Harry would curl around Eggsy and let the boy drain him dry if there weren’t so many other matters at stake.

As it is, he has to hold Eggsy’s head down to detach his wrist from Eggsy’s mouth, coming away a good portion less of his flesh for the resisting clench of Eggsy’s jaw. The resultant angry growls and whines, the renewed and newly-fuelled struggle pitched in his direction is cut off at the knees with another swiftly issued order that is, yet again, promptly and unexpectedly obeyed.

Would that he had this power over everyone, Harry dryly thinks, finishing the last of the bag in two quick swallows and trying to quiet his own empty stomach’s cry for more. Below him, Eggsy looks just as miserable as Harry feels: greyish pale, his injuries not even entirely healed.

From personal experience, Harry knows they must still be painful. He must live with the precise knowledge of what he’s done to Eggsy, the sheer amount of agony and horror he’s put the boy through ever since he showed up on his doorstep those scant few days before Christmas to tell him his father was dead.

And now this. Harry could whisper it to Eggsy a hundred thousand times, apologies and promises to do better until the words themselves become meaningless, but weren’t they always, given how often he kept breaking them?

Damned enough as it is, he takes comfort where he can in drawing Eggsy close against him anyway, wrapping his arms and a leg over the length of Eggsy’s body and coaxing Eggsy’s head to his chest, something within him soothed by the very act and heartened by the way Eggsy curls into him, nosing at the juncture of his neck in a hope that must be softly refused with a, _No_.

 

_____

 

This is their new reality: eked painstakingly out bag by reluctant bag over the half days of the refrigerator hissing open and shut.

Until those, too, eventually run out.

Time slips by and dwindles down to a dim series of moments of hazy, animalian perception amidst slow starvation.

He thinks he can feels Eggsy’s bones jutting up through his flaking skin. The deepening hollows in his face and body already attest to the malnourishment. Harry runs his hands over the peaks and dips of his skeletal frame like he can’t help himself. It’s become a mindless habit, along with the scenting and the occasional lick of skin to remind himself of all Eggsy is.

Eggsy remains sickly and inanimate most of the time now, only sparking to life when Harry offers him his wrist and, in one particularly hard-hitting moment of despair for what he’s done to them both, from his neck just so he could fully embrace and hold onto him.

When Harry has to cut him off, hold him down and force his head away, Eggsy’s pitiful tormented mewls continue to ring in his ears long after Eggsy’s fallen back into exhausted limpness once again.

Harry knows he doesn’t look much better, but it’s only a distant sort of knowledge that pales in comparison to Eggsy’s existence, which only seems to grow larger in his mind. Harry’s whole focus is wrapped up in the way Eggsy leans into him, his familiar scent that grows stronger through his thinning skin, the feel of his teeth sliding smoothly through Harry’s skin, taking more of Harry’s scarce offering without cessation because it’s the only thing left Harry can give him.

Even if it will kill him. Even if it still won’t be nearly enough.

 

_____

 

The next time Harry awakes, faculties intact, hunger no longer at the overwhelming forefront of his mind, the feeding tube is back, taped just under his nose. He is also, much to his consternation, bound up in four-point restraints.

Wise of Merlin, though, because in that moment, Harry well and truly wants to kill him. He’s speechless with rage, even when Merlin hovers in his vision, looking older than Harry has ever seen him, aged by years.

Once he manages to swallow down all the curses and vitriol he wants to hurl in Merlin’s direction, Harry finally bites out, “Where is he?”

Merlin looks over and past Harry, and Harry turns his head in the same direction to see Eggsy laid out on an adjacent table, a mirror of Harry’s own condition: bound up in the same manner, several blood bags feeding into the lines feeding into him. He already looks much healthier: hollows filled out, cheeks stained pink with the ample amounts of blood being pushed into his body.

Harry aches to reach out and touch him. His hands jerk at his sides and cause the reinforced chains to rattle. “Release me. Now.”

“And will that be the last foolish thing I ever did?” Merlin warily asks.

It’s a fair question, but Harry’s too desperate not to tell him the truth. “I won’t harm you. I just want—I just need to make sure he’s….”

“Eggsy’s fine. He’ll live—well, in a manner of speaking.” But Merlin helps to pull out the tube and Harry bears the unpleasant sensation through gritted teeth because next Merlin unlocks his restraints. Once the last shackle has been pried open, Harry’s across the room and at Eggsy’s side, cupping his face, feeling the emanating heat beneath his palm as if he were still alive.

It’s a relief and wretched reminder at once; Harry’s shoulders sink with both. With one worry pushed off, the anger returns. He can’t look away from Eggsy just yet, but his next question is issued with a low, dangerous snarl. “Where the hell were you?”

“Unexpectedly delayed,” Merlin says, and does not elaborate further. When Harry can tear his gaze from Eggsy to regard him, he finds Merlin steadfastly looking down at his tablet, only glancing up when he feels Harry’s hardened anger aimed in his direction. His face is tight with tension, but his eyes are bloodshot and chastened. “I’m sorry. It was never my intention to have left you for so long. To have had _this_ happen.”

“You should be,” Harry grounds out. Even Merlin’s remorse isn’t enough to douse the growing inferno of his fury. “You should never have locked me up like a bloody lab animal in the first place. I was taking care of myself just fine until _you_ decided you knew what was best!”

“And what is your best, Harry?” Merlin asks. “Is _this_ your best?” He throws a hand to what lies behind Harry. “I watched the recordings. You _killed_ that boy. Do you want me to play it back for you? Go on, see yourself!”

Merlin jabs at his tablet and the computer screens around them flare to life, depicting a bird’s eye greyscale view of Harry’s prison, Harry’s starved carcass laid out in the centre of it. Only the barest flicker of movement, the edge of the door opening and the top of Eggsy’s head, can be seen in the recording before there’s a blur of movement that’s too fast for the cameras to properly record, like several frames had dropped, before the image becomes clear again: Harry savaging Eggsy like the animal he is, Eggsy’s face frozen in terror and suffering.

There’s no audio to accompany the video, just Harry’s own distraught cry of horror as he has to push himself away from the image and Eggsy both, fearing to do further damage.

“Do you see?” Merlin presses from behind him, his tone softer but no less forgiving. “Do you see what I am afraid of now? You and I both know what you are capable of, yet you still went on to create _another_. Another danger posed to this world, a ticking time bomb just one bad day from committing untold amounts of damage!”

“I had no choice!” Harry shouts, turning around to defend himself and knowing all too well there is little merit upon which to build his case. “I couldn’t let him die like that. He has his whole life ahead of him. He’s supposed to have the life he deserves. I was supposed to give him that, not keep taking it away!”

“Do you really think you’ve gone and done that for him now?” Merlin’s voice has risen to match his, eyes flashing fiercely. “Cursing him to always being hungry, always having to keep himself in check because he’s a danger to everyone he knows, of having to experience the agony of coming back from dying, over and over again, of knowing he’s alone in the world?”

“He’s not alone!” Harry insists. “I didn’t want this to happen! You... _you_ left me to die, Merlin. You sent him to down here in the first place, knowing what I would become! This is just as much on you, you unfeeling bast—”

Eggsy’s stuttered gasp cuts Harry off as effectively as a hand to his throat. His torrent of fury is suddenly doused as he rushes back to Eggsy’s side, pushing back the limp hair from Eggsy’s forehead and calming himself down with the touch. “Eggsy. It’s alright. You’re alright.”

Eggsy’s eyes roll beneath his lids. His brows furrow and smooth out. His mouth turns down in a frown before gagging around the tube he feels in his throat.

“It’s alright,” Harry repeats, “You’re safe. I’m here. Do you understand me, Eggsy?”

Finally, Eggsy eyes blink oven, wincing from the overhead lights before a second, more cautious attempt is made. His eyes are a clear green, slightly glazed but focusing quickly upon Harry for several long moments. There’s a glimmer of intelligence there, a bright, conscious spark of human awareness that had been absent for too long.

Eggsy knows and understands too much in a simple look, Harry realises, witnessing the way Eggsy’s features crumple into devastation for the briefest of moments before smoothing back into into a wall of stoicism, his face for when things are terribly, terribly wrong. He parts his chapped lips, and chokes out, “I had the strangest, most awful dream, bruv.” 

His smile is fragile, tremulous. Harry laughs a little but it strikes too empty a note. In the corner of his vision, Merlin pinches the bridge of his nose and looks away in guilt.

 

_____

 

“This may be difficult to believe, but every word of what I am about to tell you is the truth,” Merlin begins.

That same stoicism stays on Eggsy’s face all throughout Merlin’s careful explanation. It’s a brittle veneer, though. Harry thinks Eggsy is only half-listening at best. He hovers close by, unable to venture more than a few feet, and then finds himself edging closer until he can brush his arm against Eggsy’s, lean his hip into Eggsy’s side. Finally he gives up pretense altogether by resting a palm over the back of Eggsy’s neck, pleased by the way Eggsy relaxes beneath him in spite of Merlin’s glare.

After the explanation—gone uninterrupted, no questions—come the lessons Eggsy will have to learn in order to navigate the realities of his new existence. Learning to temper his strength and speed. Learning to deal with his expanded senses and how to selectively tune out all the meaningless noise. Learning to live with the constant thirst.

It’s this last that proves especially challenging. Harry doesn’t know if the prolonged trauma of his formative days has imprinted itself onto his psyche, but Eggsy’s reaction to the blood bags is nearly visceral, a complete physical recoil from them when they are presented to him for the first time.

“You have to drink it,” Harry says, patiently holding one out to him.

“Fuck that,” Eggsy defiantly spits at him. “It’s fucking rank.”

“It’s the only way to keep your mind and not slip back into….” What they had been. What had led to this.

Knowing all too well what’s at stake if he continues to refuse, jaw visibly clenched, Eggsy sullenly takes the bag, squeezing his eyes shut and trying not to gag. He’s only able to finish half of it all the same before scowling at Harry and refusing to speak for the rest of the day.

Unfortunately for Eggsy, they soon learn he requires more blood than Harry, by at least two more units per day. Different metabolism, Merlin speculates, though he isn’t sure if it’s because Eggsy was turned younger or if the transformation has different effects on different people.

The news is rather ill met.

“I’m a fucking monster! You made me a monster!” Eggsy screams as he decimates Merlin’s lab by throwing anything not bolted down (and some things that are) in a raging tempest until Harry has to restrain him in his arms.

And when that doesn’t do much to calm Eggsy, a half-shouting, frothing beast who fights Harry’s unbreakable hold and practically vibrates with so much stress, Harry, at his wit’s end, turns up his wrist and suffers the piercing shred of teeth when Eggsy grabs it and bites down.

When Merlin locks them in to take his leave, sometimes briefly, sometimes for longer periods of time as his Kingsman responsibilities require, Harry curls himself back around Eggsy protectively, finding any sense of his prior reserve all but absent in the wake of this inner driving need. Eggsy always lets him, even on the days when it’s clear that he’s angry at Harry, always leaning into him, spine curving into Harry if he’s spooned from behind or pressing his front all up against Harry’s when they lie face to face. They always do this on the floor, not the now neglected bed, just like they had done all throughout their starvation.

They will exist and there will be long periods where neither one speaks and the only sounds are the generators humming and, if they were to direct their senses further out, the noises of life above them passing them by. It’s either a comfortable silence or a moody one, but for each, Harry will content himself with the habitual rise and fall of Eggsy’s chest, the glimpse of Eggsy’s profile he can just see over his shoulder.

Other times, Harry will find the courage to ask, “What are you thinking about right now?”

Most of the time, that question will earn him nothing more than a flinty look that Harry can’t sort out and then a deeper nuzzle that will make Harry forget he asked, too caught up in the primal desire of the tactile, with smelling Eggsy’s skin or counting the bones of his spine.

Sometimes though, Eggsy will be honest.

“I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m scared. And angry. And hungry all the fucking time. It’s like this annoying itch I can’t scratch. It doesn’t feel right. None of this feels right.”

His words sting greatly, but Harry deserves to hear every single one of them, accepts them into his heart and lets the hurt germinate and grow. Eggsy’s pain is his pain now, all of it.

The only time Eggsy’s face is painted in rapture is when his teeth are sunk deep into Harry’s wrist and he’s greedily drinking at the blood until Harry feels lightheaded from Eggsy’s transparent bliss just as much from the physical blood loss.

“God, it’s practically better than sex like this,” Eggsy sighs when he has to pull off.

Harry is wont to agree. For one brief moment, they are both transported from the misery of their situation and the taxing demands of their unceasing hunger, connected in a way Harry can’t describe, can only feel with each tugging pressure and growing ache delivered from Eggsy’s mouth that he urges by pressing his wrist closer, stroking an encouraging hand across the planes of Eggsy’s face, until Eggsy’s cheeks are flushed and he’s hard against Harry’s thigh. Under the ever-watchful eyes of the camera, they don’t dare try for anything more.

The isolation, this time, is not so bad with Eggsy beside him. And as much as that induces the appropriate levels of guilt and horror, try as he might, Harry can’t help but take comfort in it too: he is no longer alone in this world. As Merlin has pointed out: he’s created another just like himself. 

“Will we ever be allowed to leave?” Eggsy asks him on one of his bad days, pacing like the caged animal he’s all but become. Harry couldn’t say which because he lost any sense of the passing days long ago. “Are we gonna spend the rest of our fucking lives down here?” Eggsy punctuates his seething frustration with a punch to the wall, and Harry can hear the wince-inducing crunch of bones in his fist even as the wall doesn’t so much as bear a dent.

No, this cannot go on for much longer, Harry thinks, because to do so would be unimaginable. Harry gone missing down here may not have been cause for concern given the wide acceptance of his official death, but Eggsy’s absence will be noticed if it hasn’t already.

It’s something he brings up to Merlin in the lab when he asks to speak with him in private. “Eggsy has enough control now to be allowed out. In fact, you can and should free us both, since the only reason why you kept me down here in the first place was because Eggsy thought I was dead.”

Merlin stares at him steadily, expression unreadable. “You can’t possibly think that wise, were you in my position. You’ve seen him. He’s angry and impulsive. It’s harder for him to control himself, and you don’t help, letting him feed off you more than he does from the bags.”

“Don’t you think what’s contributing to his anger is being locked up here against his will?” Harry points out. “It would help immensely if he were allowed to acclimate back to his normal life, to see his friends and family again. I know that’s what helped me to accept what I had become, knowing most of my life would carry on as normal. And I’ll be there to keep an eye on him and make sure nothing happens. You’ll be here to watch us both. You trusted me once.”

“And how does that explain your return from the dead?” Merlin asks.

Harry shrugs, less concerned about that. “Eggsy and Chester were the only ones who ever witnessed my actual death and neither will be a problem now. Just make something up. My glasses deflected the bullet just enough so as to not kill me. It was still a long recovery but no severe damage done. Excellent plastic surgeons. Bionic eye. Amazing Kingsman technology that’s decades ahead of its time works its magic again, etcetera.”

Merlin is less than impressed, but grudgingly says, “I’ll think about it.” And Harry knows not to press any further.

It’s perhaps two weeks later when Merlin fully relents, though it’s not, per se, out of a change of heart.

“Steiber’s reached out,” Merlin tells them, looking all the more unhappy for it.

At his side, Eggsy perks up, hopeful, though Harry doesn’t know who that is or what’s happened. “Yeah?”

Merlin doesn’t leave them in suspense for long. “He wants to set up a buy.” He gives Eggsy a look that could be construed as despairing and warning both. “His client will only meet with you, Eggsy.”

 

_____

 

For all that he’d been eager to leave his confines, Eggsy is almost hesitant when he steps off the lift onto the main floors of the manor. Harry sympathises: after having stared at so much white bathed in dim incandescent lighting, of smelling only sterile, recycled air, the gleaming polished wood floors, high ceilings, and broad windows to the picturesque outdoors seem dizzyingly expansive. That’s to say nothing of the rich tapestry of sounds both within and without the estate that assault their ears, the layers upon layers of scents.

“Remember,” he whispers in Eggsy ear, daring to splay his palm between Eggsy’s shoulder blades and feel the tension strung along his spine. “Tune out the noise.”

Eggsy swallows and doesn’t say anything, but Harry catches the slightest jerk of his head in response.

Merlin has assured them their way to the front drive would be clear and a Kingsman taxi would be waiting to drive them into London. The less people they encountered for now, the better.

It’s a brilliantly sunny day, the kind they would have, once upon a time, rushed to greet with open arms, and Eggsy nearly does except as soon as he escapes the manor’s long shadow and steps into the unfiltered light, he flinches, using his arms to shield his face. “Jesus fuck!”

“Increased UV sensitivity,” Harry says, wincing and then dragging Eggsy back into the cool succor of the shade before fishing in the inner pocket of his suit jacket (pausing to marvel at the feeling of wearing a suit again) to retrieve a pair of sunglasses to hand to him. Both Harry and Merlin had forgotten to explain that one, the former for long having been used to avoiding the sun that the act had become thoughtless, the latter for having taken it for granted. “You have to be careful now, especially on sunny days or in certain climates and latitudes. The sun will deplete your strength very quickly and you must adjust your blood intake accordingly. It’s best to avoid it altogether.”

“So that’s the one bit of lore that’s gotta be true. _Fantastic_. Can’t eat pizza, drink beer, and now can’t work on my tan,” Eggsy mutters as he slips on the sunglasses. “So the real reason why you always carry a brolly.”

“It has multiple uses,” Harry says.

They quickly duck into the taxi where the tinted windows protect them. There’s no driver, so Harry takes up the wheel, spending the whole trip split between minding the ever-awful traffic and sneaking glances at Eggsy beside him.

Eggsy, who peers out at the world like a child seeing it for the first time. In a way, he is, perceiving more details in the trees and grass, in other people’s cars, than he ever had before, finally understanding how rich and vast it really was. “I can hear people’s conversations,” he tells Harry in amused wonder.

The couple in the BMW beside them are arguing about the husband spending too much time at the pubs after work. Some three cars back, a child is listening to some inane programme on her mother’s phone. In front of them, a brother and sister take vicious verbal swipes at each other while their parents tiredly plead for civility. The symphony of humanity, as it were.

“It’s rude to eavesdrop,” Harry chides, though he can’t help the smirk that graces his lips. “I’ll warn you that Merlin likes to take advantage of this particular skill and will send you out on all those dreadful surveillance missions. Claims it saves on having to risk damage to the expensive tech.”

Eggsy scoffs. “Well I guess it wouldn’t be Merlin if he didn’t know how to optimise misfortune.”

He knows it had been meant in jest, but Harry has to strive to keep a neutral, unaffected expression.

Matters become more challenging the closer to London they get. More people, more noise, more foul and tantalising smells, more _everything_. He can see the way Eggsy tenses in the passenger seat, white knuckled fists bunched over his thighs, eyes pinched at the corners, lips pressed together with teeth clamped down, too wound up to speak.

Harry wants to tell him it will take getting used to, but he suspects Eggsy is skating a fine line and he doesn’t want to be the one to topple him over into another dark mood.

There’s a near palpable relief in the air when they near the mews to Harry’s home that had then become Eggsy’s. Theirs together now, Harry supposes, but as soon as he steps through the door for the first time in months, what strikes him the most is how little has changed, like he’d merely gone away for an extended trip with the dust accumulation and general sense of musty neglect to match.

A jangle of a metal tags and nails clipping the floorboards alerts them to JB’s excited presence. Merlin must have tasked someone with bringing him over ahead of their arrival.

“JB!” Eggsy cries out, falling to his knees and holding out his arms as the pug trots over to them, curly tail wagging furiously, only to frown when JB’s step slow and stop altogether a few feet away. “JB? Come here. Come on.” A high-pitched whine rises up in JB’s throat as he begins to back away from them that soon transforms into a low-throated growl when Eggsy tries to close the gap. “JB, it’s still me,” Eggsy implores. “JB, come here you stupid, overgrown rat!”

This last rises into a shout that sends JB skittering away, Eggsy starting forward as if to go after him, stopped only by Harry’s hand upon his shoulder. “Your scent’s changed,” Harry tries to placate. “It’ll take time for him to relearn it, but he will, Eggsy. He’s a smart dog.”

Eggsy doesn’t respond, only glares up at Harry like it’s all his fault, which, really, is just as well. Harry leaves him alone for the time being, knowing Eggsy needs the time alone to process the adjustment, one of many yet to come.

Instead, Harry contents himself with wandering from room to room, making minute corrections to barely crooked picture frames, cleaning out mouldy food from the refrigerator and restocking it with the blood Merlin had sent along with them, noting with concern the much depleted levels of alcohol in the bar, sighing over the dead plants in the window boxes, frowning at how dusty Mr Pickle had become and consequently spending the next hour brushing him until his coat shined with pride once more.

He picks up traces of Eggsy here and there, concentrated in one chair in the sitting room and most strongly, of course, in his bed. All his suits are wedged into one spare gap in the wardrobe and he hasn’t so much as shifted any of Harry’s things off the top of the dresser or in the loo. At first glance, Harry would think Eggsy hadn’t lived here at all.

By the time Harry’s finished with his domestic accounting, the last rays of brilliant sun flood through the front windows, bathing the front room in a warm golden glow that he promptly snuffs out by drawing the curtains. He doesn’t see Eggsy at first until he turns around and catches sight of him sitting at the head of the dining table, staring at the centre of it like there are secrets to be divined. In the far corner, probably as far from Eggsy as he can get, JB is curled up in his dog bed, regarding them both with dark, wet-eyed suspicion.

“Do you think you can eat?” Harry asks. It would be a foolish question to ask whether or not Eggsy was hungry.

Eggsy blinks and stirs from the stillness that had enveloped him, a sly glint in his eye.

“I’ll heat up the bags,” Harry says pointedly.

“Not hungry,” Eggsy mutters, interest ebbing while he does his best impression of a put-out child.

“That,” Harry says from the kitchen, plopping two bags in the bain-marie and clipping a digital thermometer to the side with practised ease, “Is a distinct lie. You’ll have to get used to it, you know. I won’t be with you all the time.”

The chair scrapes across the floor in a way that is sure to leave a scuff mark, and less than a second later, he feels Eggsy’s presence at his back in a rush of displaced air that kisses his neck. “Now I know why you never had any food in your cabinets,” Eggsy says over his shoulder, so quiet Harry thinks he means to say it only for himself.

“I suppose my grocery bills are supported directly by Merlin’s discretionary fund,” Harry tells him anyway. Once the hob is going, he turns around to face Eggsy head on.

“More money to spend on your suits?” Eggsy asks, quirking a brow. His earlier foul mood seems to have eased back into a more familiar agreeable and smart-arsed demeanour. “I’ve seen your wardrobe, Harry, you fop.”

“One can never have too many suits.”

Eggsy smiles, a genuine one, if small. Harry’s sorely missed the light that makes his eyes shine and lights up his whole face. He’s so much paler now; the light does not stretch so far anymore, but he is still, Harry thinks, so breathtakingly lovely.

“It’s strange to be able to talk to you in your kitchen like this,” Eggsy says. “Didn’t think I’d ever have the chance to again, and now….”

“Be careful what you wish for?” Harry dryly finishes for him.

But Eggsy shakes his head; his heart has always been worn on his sleeve. “No. No, I...I’m grateful. For this at least.” He bites his lips as if it pains him to next admit, “I’m just so glad you’re back.”

“Come here,” Harry says, and Eggsy immediately slides into his arms. There aren’t the usual signs of life Harry had previously savoured: the warmth, the steady flurry of his heart, his own unique scent, but something fundamental and inextricable now entwines them more deeply than ever, and that appeals to the dark, lurking thing inside of him, turns it inexplicably tender.

“After you had gone, this never felt like my home,” Eggsy says, words slightly distorted for the way he buries his face against Harry’s chest. “But it feels like it when it’s like this.”

Eventually, the thermometer chirps and despite the way his mouth curls in disgust, Eggsy drinks the bagged blood with a resigned determination, bearing the indignity like it’s a chore rather than a pleasure. But Harry always relishes the way his stomach quiets for just a moment, just a brief second where the hunger ceases its clamouring and he can feel a fleeting sense of steady state contentment. Even as the want starts to creep back, the warmth still suffuses his limbs, his skin. It’s the closest to feeling alive as he’ll ever get.

Though he may grimace at the taste and perhaps the notion, the same effects, too, grace Eggsy’s body. His pupils dilate, his breath falls heavier, and he stares wide-eyed and dazed when Harry cups his cheek and presses him back against the counter, tipping his face up and hungrily opening his mouth to Harry’s copper-lined kiss. 

From there, it’s all haste to capitalise on the waning effects the blood affords them. Eggsy’s hands grip Harry’s hips tight enough to bruise if they still could, plastering the lengths of their bodies against each other to ease the terribly present, intoxicating, _wonderful_ demands of their arousal, rutting like animals in heat, wet mouths gliding against each other, more often missing and sliding along cheeks and jaws instead.

Regardless of his sartorial reverence, Harry nearly growls in mounting frustration and his hands move to tear at Eggsy’s suit, finding it easier to rend with his hands than to bother with untying knots and undoing buttons. And while Eggsy attempts more delicacy, by the end, their clothes are in tatters all over the kitchen floor and Harry’s running his hands down the beautifully sculpted muscles of his body, grinding their flushed cocks together with every steady, forceful rock of his hips, teeth sinking into Eggsy’s throat over the very same spot they had first broken in.

“ _Harry_ ,” Eggsy cries out and shivers in his hold, fingers digging painfully into his arms, but pulling him closer all the same. The taste of him, blood of his blood, is richly comforting, like coming home at the end of a long day, feeling one’s self truly relax in the one place that feels safe. Harry pulls his teeth from Eggsy’s skin and the deep red, almost black, blood that sluggishly seeps from the wound streaks down the column of his neck, pooling at the hollow above his collarbone. He waits until enough of it has coalesced, threatening to spill over, before leaning down to lap it up in long swipes of tongue, bone to throat, tonguing the open wound that makes Eggsy shudder and jerk in his grip before doing it again and again.

“I could taste you like this all day,” he says, scraping his lower teeth against the underside of Eggsy’s jaw. “Gods, _gods_ , you’re sweet.”

“Can’t you see why I prefer this more than anything else?” Eggsy sighs, turning his head to catch Harry’s mouth again, running his tongue across Harry’s and over the roof of his mouth to taste himself.

Yes, yes he can see, because it already feels like Eggsy is the most present and vital thing in this world. Just as Eggsy’s sorrows sit heavily within Harry’s chest, so too do his joys, every delighted intake of breath when he circles Eggsy’s cock with his hand and strokes him in earnest, swallowing down every elated moan Eggsy releases into his mouth.

When Eggsy tenses against him and comes between their bodies, he surges forward and sinks his teeth into Harry’s neck to mirror his own bite. He desperately suckles as Harry thrusts hard and frantic against him, counterpointing the sensations of pain and pleasure until Harry yanks Eggsy’s head back by his hair and licks into Eggsy’s gaping mouth as he tumbles over the precipice of his own climax.

In the slowly descending panting aftermath, Harry finds himself bearing nearly all of Eggsy’s lassitude while carding an affectionate hand through the hair he’d so recently abused, covered in three kinds of bodily fluid, and terribly, hopelessly devoted to the stunning creature in his arms.

 

_____

 

It’s Lancelot, punctual as she is competent, who is the first agent to enter the dining room for the meeting and thus she becomes the first agent after Galahad to see their new Arthur sat at the head of the table.

She pauses for only the briefest of moments, the shock rippling across her face only for a brief instant as she cautiously glances at Merlin and then at Eggsy sitting at Harry’s right, takes in the latter’s barely contained excitement, perhaps noting some other changed quality too that she won’t be able to adequately pinpoint, and, satisfied that some unbalanced scale in the world has finally been righted, nods to Harry with a conservative, “Sir,” before taking her seat.

“Lancelot,” Harry greets in kind, catching the quick wink Eggsy gives her.

From there, it’s an amusing repetition of much the same, though the other agents manage to hide their surprise with varying degrees of success. Bors is the least convincing at nonchalance. Caradoc’s is exasperated (“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”). Gawain’s doubletake is the most humourous. Percival looks at Harry like a safely perched cat would a barking dog: utterly indifferent, perhaps slightly annoyed.

“As you all might have guessed,” Merlin begins when every agent has assembled in person or via their glasses, “Rumours of Harry’s death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Harry can’t help looking to Eggsy for the pleasure of watching him barely contain his smirk.

“While our Galahad has been living up to his title, Harry has been convalescing stateside with our American cousins. He’s only recently been declared fit enough to return home and assume his new and badly needed duties. If the position hasn’t already been made clear enough already, I would, gentlemen, lady, like to present to you Kingsman’s newest Arthur, long may he live.” To his credit, Merlin is faultless in his delivery.

In customary fashion, the formalities of the meeting are swiftly abandoned in favour of breaking out the celebratory drinks, many a heartfelt congratulations, and naturally, no shortage of questions, but Harry’s had such a long and established history of overcoming the seemingly impossible that this latest stunt is easily accepted with hardly a bat of the eye.

Through it all, Eggsy remains by his side, practically beaming, naked in his adoration, beautiful, and Harry feels large and warm in the wash of his silent praise like a proud dog. They’ve done it: defied death, Merlin’s dire threats, all of it. They have their freedom to live their lives as they so choose. Most importantly, of course, they have each other.

As if sensing the self-satisfied tone of his thoughts, Merlin falls into line beside him the moment Lancelot drags Eggsy off for a one-on-one discussion. “That was a gracious speech you gave,” Harry tells him, voice rising no higher than the general din. “Very eloquent. It didn’t look like it had pained you at all to see your plans wither on the vine rather than come to fruition.”

“You may very well bear the title for now, Harry, but never for a second forget whose hands are on the reins, including yours,” Merlin says in kind while Harry gives Tristan’s wordless cheer an acknowledged nod from across the room. “Do you want to know what I learned on my travels that kept me away for so long?”

When Eggsy throws him a questioning glance, Harry just shakes his head and gives him a smile that he hopes is reassuring and not as alarmed as he’s starting to feel. “Something of weighty significance, I would hope, given the consequences of all that entailed.”

“A way for you to permanently die,” Merlin says almost pleasantly. “Now Eggsy too, I suppose. And while I don’t ever want it to have to come down to that, know that I will do what I must should I have to.”

Caradoc’s boisterous laughter cracks out, momentarily putting a stop to the conversations as all eyes fall to him. The man had always been too loud for his own good and wouldn’t know discretion if it had sat at the bottom of his cups, but he was intimidatingly demonic with firearms and all manner of explosive devices, and for that alone, Harry always held him in high regard.

He’s a straightforward, guileless man, and Harry would never have to worry about his back with him.

“Have a good night, Arthur,” Merlin says, clasping Harry on the shoulder before he slips away back to his own domain below.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s only when they’re some forty-five minutes in the air that Roxy asks about it. It’d been comfortably silent until then, each of them immersed in re-reading the mission briefing, combing out any last potential knots in their game plan, which was really pretty simple when it came down to it: pose as a self-important government drone and his pretty assistant (who, Roxy elaborated beyond the actual details written in their covers, had initially been hired for sexist reasons but has since proven herself capable), deliver a few quips, confirm all wanted persons and tech were on site, pretend to make a large, dodgy financial transaction, then eliminate or arrest everyone. Simple.

Roxy’s question, though, is anything but. She leans forward in her seat and plants her elbows atop her knees, too used to always having to make herself seem larger in front of her peers. She does well enough to freeze Eggsy in place with her direct, unflinching gaze. “Is everything alright?”

Beneath the pressurised air being recycled through the cabin, all the whirring parts of the plane itself, ice cubes rattling in the freezer behind the bar, the frequency transmissions from air control, spinning turbines, the dull roar of a cylindrical metal tube breaking through the air, he can hear her heartbeat. He can hear the pilot’s too. Both are at a steady, resting rate. Roxy’s is louder and more immediate, of course, wrapped up in her light floral scent. Her blood smells delicate too, but beneath it is gunpowder and the rubber scent of the mats for all the time she spends down in the range and gym, respectively. Too much saliva is pooling in his mouth for his comfort.

“Yeah,” he hears himself say faintly from seemingly a hundred miles away. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

Unsurprisingly, it does little to placate her. She’s always been too perceptive for her own good. “You’ve been...different. Ever since Harry came back.”

He’s afraid that if he tries to laugh it off, it will emerge as too hysterical, so he grinds his teeth together, clenching his jaw. “Well…” he tries, racking his brain to think of what he can say. “... _yeah_. I mean, bit of a shock.” It doesn’t prove very convincing though. He can see it in the minute deepening of Roxy’s frown. He’s got to go for major diversion, even though it feels too personal right now to divulge. “And we’re...seeing each other.”

The troubled expression on Roxy’s face clears up like clouds parting from the sun. “Oh.”

Seeing that foothold, Eggsy latches onto it, trying to get firmer standing. “It’s different than what I expected. And we’re still trying to sort things out. It’s just...a lot to take in right now, this whole spy thing, and Harry, and….”

It’s a lame finish, but it’s mostly true, and more importantly, it’s done the job. Roxy’s features are now fully softened with sympathy. “Is he...is he _pressuring_ you…?”

“ _No_. No, it’s nothing like that.” If anything, Eggsy reflects, it’s him who can’t seem to keep his mouth (or teeth) off Harry. Even the passing thought feels like a small lightning strike to his system. The craving shoots up in immediacy, he salivates, remembering the texture of Harry’s skin, how much pressure it took to bite down, to pierce. His newly vampiric set of teeth descend and cut into his gums, whetting his tongue with a preview of blood. _Fuck_.

Before Roxy can say something, he shoots out of his seat and holes himself up in the lavatory, letting the stronger filtration system seep through his own senses. He covers his mouth and nose, breathes in deeply, slowly, before exhaling, then again and again, keeping his eyes closed so he doesn’t have to see their predatory glint in the mirror, until his teeth recede back into the waiting shadows and he feels halfway human once more.

Roxy’s been knocking on the door. “Eggsy? Eggsy are you alright? Please answer me.”

“I’m fine,” he calls out to her, thankful that the door would muffle the shakiness in his voice. “Sorry. Just been feeling under the weather.”

“You _are_ a bit pale,” Roxy says in a conclusively satisfied tone like another puzzle piece had fallen into place, all her half-formed suspicions and observations finding a home in a plausible if completely wrong explanation. “Are you sure you’re up for this? I can talk to Merlin, see if we can push it back some.”

“No! I mean, yes, yes I’m up for it. I’ll be fine.” Roxy jumps in spite of herself when Eggsy yanks opens the door on her, smiling in what he hopes is in a reassuring manner. “After all, Kingsman business waits for no man.”

Odessa is vividly Mediterranean in look and feel with its limestone architecture, and more lushly warm than Eggsy expected. It is only marginally less crowded as the tourist season has started to wind down, but the streets are still teeming with old men playing chess, crowds at the markets, pedestrians sauntering down the wide cobbled roads, and sun worshippers packing the marshrutkas for a day down at the beaches.

The sun is no friend to him, however. Eggsy had practically darted from the airport to their car, shades firmly kept on, face tucked away as far as it could from the unrelenting light, much to Roxy’s increasing bewilderment. “Just a migraine,” he says. “Still not at 100%, yeah?” Which was enough of a logical explanation for her to accept without further questions and even to forego wondering about his continued brooding silence if not her continued worrying. Not for the last time, he wishes he could have gone on this mission alone, but Merlin doesn’t trust him just yet.

They have a narrow window this time, in and hopefully out in a few hours with their targets in tow. Eggsy knows he’s testing his limits on this one in more ways than one. As much as he _hates_ being locked up, had wanted to tear off his own skin in the interminable boredom and frustration, he has to know he can still do this, be this.

 _I will do what I must should I have to_ , he had perfectly heard Merlin quietly utter even from across the length of the dining room. He has to know he isn’t the monster Merlin fears him to be.

The address they’re given takes them to the older parts of the city where the shine and polish have long since worn off, or, probably more accurately, had never been bothered with in the first place. The colourful buildings of a newer city aren’t to be found here, just long, endless rows of drab cement one-storey homes with corrugated roofs, wrought iron bars on the windows, and lines of old tyres sitting out in the grassless front yards.

At last, Roxy parks the car in front of a home almost indistinguishable from the ones surrounding it save for the cheap metal sheeting serving as a fence. “This it?” he asks unnecessarily. Not that Roxy would have steered them wrong.

“I didn’t pick the place,” she says before getting out of the car with the briefcase.

Eggsy chances a glare at the cloudless blue sky and follows suit, keeping his head bowed low as he follows at Roxy’s heels through the gate and round the back of the house, feeling the sun like a prickle of needles at the back of his neck. He’s brought along his umbrella, though he expects to be using it more for appearances than its more helpful applications.

The back garden is empty and desolate save for a clothesline bearing a few scraps of what were maybe once filmy grey sheets. There’s a screened in back door that isn’t locked. Roxy and Eggsy share a look before they step into the house.

By all appearances, the house seems abandoned, but Eggsy can hear them stirring in the cellar as if he were right next to them. Three heartbeats. He recognises Steiber’s steady rate and oily laugh. There’s one deliciously faster than the others, nervous. One that is calm but the breathing is heavier, someone who has significant muscle mass—hired, surely. A cakewalk, almost suspiciously so.

He has to grit his teeth and bide his time as Roxy cautiously explores the abandoned and long since picked over rooms on the ground floor though, but his impatience finally gets the better of him when he pretends to just so happen pass by the cellar door and makes as if he’s heard something that’s drawn his attention.

Roxy is immediately on guard, pressing her ear to the door before nodding. With a deep breath, Eggsy straightens his shoulders and descends the stairs with all the arrogance of a government official who not only finds all these precautions tedious but is only barely tolerating the depths to which he must descend. “Mr Steiber,” he says in a lazy drawl. “It seems you keep lowering the bar of our meeting points.”

When his feet touch the cement floor, Eggsy leans on his umbrella and gets his first good look at his surroundings, only to discover his other senses paint a far more lush landscape. The cellar itself is almost entirely bare and smells strongly of limestone, rust, and mold. There are several cracks in the foundation that have widened over the years and let in the damp—Eggsy can hear the drops of water hitting the metal pipes and insects scurrying within the foundation—and it is very likely the whole structure would fall apart in a few more.

He concentrates on all these details even as the swell of heartbeats at the centre of the room call to him in piper's song, the luring smell of their blood barely being held back by his hyper-acute focus on everything but. Even the deep-seated repulsion Eggsy thought he had for Steiber doesn’t mitigate the appealing scent beneath the body odour and sweat.

 _Tune out the noise_ , he hears Harry saying. Shallow breaths.

“You do not like?” Steiber says, feigning surprised hurt. “I thought some place more quiet would better suit you.” He leers at Roxy, openly looking her up and down. “You brought a friend?”

“My assistant,” Eggsy says dismissively, as if the role he’s assuming doesn't see the need to elaborate upon the existence of someone so unimportant, before raising an expectant brow at the squirrelly man who remains half-hidden behind Steiber.

“This is my client, Dr Lyle Goentzel, a former member of Valentine’s research team who worked exclusively on the SIM card project,” Steiber says, stepping out of the way. “Usually, Dr Goentzel does not meet his buyers but when I told him of your generous payment terms, he wanted to see for himself if they were legitimate ones. I’m half curious myself.”

Goentzel doesn't quite adhere to the usual scientist cut of cloth. He is tall and solidly built, but for all his natural bulk, he hunches in on himself as if he could take up less room, and his small, blue eyes dart wildly around the cellar, rarely meeting anyone’s gaze for more than a second at a time. Conversely, their bodyguard has no issue with visually scrutinising Eggsy and Roxy thoroughly.

 _He’s telling the truth_ , Merlin says over their glasses. Eggsy can hear the clatter of the keyboard beneath his fingers over the comms. _Employed during the years between 2001 and 2013. Reportedly left V-Corp over a disagreement with patent rights over SIM card and...various frequency transmitting technologies. There were several lawsuits pending at the time. Of course, with those prospects of payout gone, I’m sure our good doctor is in need of more funds._

“Dr Goentzel,” Eggsy greets, inclining his head. “If you’re really worried….” Without further prompting, Roxy somehow manages to gracefully balance the briefcase on her arm to retrieve a tablet. Her fingers efficiently fly across the surface of the screen for mere seconds before she’s holding it out for their astonished party to witness. “You were trying to sell V-tech for $5 million US, was it? All my assistant has to do is press a button, and it gets wired into your Swiss account in moments. Let’s call it a down payment, shall we? How much would you want for everything in your arsenal? Name your price.”

Goentzel pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “Mr Dench,” he begins hesitatingly, and Eggsy can practically hear Roxy’s exasperated sigh at the name he insisted on using for his cover. “While your government is...is very generous. It is against my principles to, to let any one country stockpile weapons of such magnitude.”

“But apparently it isn’t against your principles to sell such devastating weapons in the first place. Funny place to draw the line, don’t you think?” Eggsy says with a humourless smile. “Especially when I’m about to make you a very rich man. So tell me, how much does it take? $50 million? $100?”

Each number makes Goentzel’s brows climb higher and higher. Eggsy can practically see the monetary calculations going on behind those beady eyes and come to a favourable conclusion. Steiber, too, looks like he wants nothing more than to shake the man into submission, no doubt he’d be getting a cut of whatever Goentzel decided, large or small. But there is little to fear: Goentzel takes a breath as if psyching himself up to say something brave. “$250 million.”

“Agreed,” Eggsy says, and from the surprised looks on their faces, they had been expecting more of a fight. “Provided the tech does what you say.”

“Of course. We wouldn’t ask you to buy something sight unseen.” Steiber nods to the muscle who opens a case behind him and moves a large glass container to the centre of the cellar. Attached to the inside of it is a large, bulky sort of speaker reminiscent of those sound systems from the early nineties, a far cry from the slim, sophisticated SIM card models Valentine had slipped into everyone’s mobiles. Within the container itself are five unaware mice.

Eggsy tenses in spite of himself, and from the corner of his eye he can see Roxy slowly widen her stance. Steiber must pick up on the spike in tension because he looks at them and laughs. “Fear not, my little spooks. The container is completely sound proof. The only ones who will hear it are those unfortunate enough to be in this glass box.”

It only takes a flick of a switch. Eggsy flinches anyway, expecting the worst, but he hears nothing, just the heightened collective breathing, the ratcheting of pulses, and an utter engrossment with what is happening before them.

The mice have gone, for lack of a better word, fucking mad, zipping about their prison and then attacking each other with vicious ferocity. Eggsy doesn’t know what two mice fighting sounds like, but he can see it: the way they claw and bite into each other with their sharp teeth, going for the face, throat, and ears first, drawing blood that stains their snow white fur. It’s over in a matter of minutes until there’s nothing but blood, entrails, tufts of ripped out fur all over the container, and one badly injured, likely dying mouse throwing itself repeatedly against the glass walls.

“We get the picture. Turn it off,” Roxy snaps. There’s a barely concealed vein of disgust in her tone.

Steiber smirks up at them as he turns the device off and straightens. Within the container, the mouse falls on its side, its torn open side rising and falling in its last death throes. “They started testing with mice first, but it’s the same technology Valentine used for his SIM cards. I don’t think you’d want to see a human demonstration of that, though.”

“No, I think we’ll go with your word on the matter,” Eggsy says, striving to remain unaffected. “We can send you half payment today, the other half when we receive the rest of your little devices. Sound good?”

“Actually,” Goentzel says, “We can complete the entire purchase today. I-I have it all here. That is, I have brought everything because...because….”

“Because ours is not the only business you had intended on doing today,” Eggsy concludes, smiling brightly. “You’ve got to hand it to a man who likes to get on all his death dealing in before tea.”

He’s still smiling even as he shoots his foot into the torso of the bodyguard with a sidekick, sending him flying to the crumbling cement wall.

Roxy goes for Steiber just as he tries to retrieve a gun from the small of his back, swinging her suitcase up and whipping it across the side of his head, sending him to the floor. Eggsy tosses her his umbrella, which she nimbly catches and swings at the back of Steiber's head again as he attempts to clamber up, this time knocking him out cold.

The bodyguard swiftly recovers and tries to retrieve his own weapon from his shoulder holster, but Eggsy latches onto his wrist and easily keeps it still. The man gives him a look of disbelief that quickly transforms into fear as he sees the inhumanness lurking within Eggsy’s eyes.

“Demon!” he hisses.

It’s all, however, washed away with pain when Eggsy slowly twists his arm with enough force to relish the gradual sickening split of bones.

“Goentzel’s escaped!” Roxy’s voice breaks through his pleasurable haze.

He slams the bodyguard against the wall hard enough to knock him out and drops him, whipping his head around, scenting the air. No Goentzel. Didn’t go up the stairs. Eggsy can’t hear him outside, but...he stares down at the gaping hole in the floor that had previously been masked by a rotting wooden board.

“Bloody hell, where does it go?” Roxy asks, glaring down at the hole. It’s so dark, they can’t even see past the pale halo of light cast down into it from the gas lanterns Steiber's party must have set up prior to their meeting.

 _No idea_ , Merlin says, _But I can make an educated guess. This house was probably used as a smuggler’s entrance to the catacombs_.

“Catacombs?” Eggsy asks.

“Odessa has an extensive network of them that runs all under the city and surrounding area,” Roxy says. “Much of which is unmapped. Goentzel must have had this exit route planned in case things went south. Merlin, permission to go in after him? He can’t have got far.”

 _Negative, Lancelot_ , Merlin says. _It’s more likely you’ll end up getting hopelessly lost down there and there’s a good chance we could lose connection_.

“I can do it,” Eggsy says.

“What? Galahad, you can’t possibly—”

_Absolutely not, Galahad. You’re risking too—_

But it’s too late, Eggsy jumps down into the hole, landing lightly on his feet, and takes off at a run.

 _Galahad, you won’t be able to explain this—_ Merlin tries again before Eggsy pulls off his glasses and slips them into his pocket.

It’s dark, completely pitch black the further he moves away from the cellar, and not even his excellent low-light vision can help him now. But it hardly matters, Eggsy finds, not when he can still envision the world so clearly.

The limestone ceilings are low, claustrophobic. Scents of chalk and stale water fill his nose. But he can hear it, unsteady footsteps ahead pounding against stone, tripping, disturbing piles of rubble. Exerted panting. A furiously pumping heart. Down here in the dark, Eggsy doesn’t have to hide it, the beast that lurks within.

His gait is fast and swift, easily navigating over crumbling piles of stone and uneven dips in the floor, senses attuned, teeth descended, hunger pumping through his veins as thickly as the blood until that heartbeat grows louder, louder, until it’s so close, Eggsy can reach out and grab it—

Goentzel screams as Eggsy’s hand closes over his neck and wrenches him back into his embrace like an overeager child cradling a doll. The torch Goentzel had been wielding clatters to ground and sputters out. He struggles in Eggsy’s arms like a fish on the hook, unable to remove the restricting vice.

Eggsy leans in and smells the sweat on his skin, hears the blood whooshing just beneath it. Just a little taste, fresh and hot from the source….

“What the hell are you?” Goentzel shouts through tremulous breaths

Eggsy blinks, teeth poised over skin and ready to break through, but the words penetrate his conscious and he’s suddenly aware of what he’d been about to do.

He pulls back as sharply as he had been about to delve in, releasing Goentzel and throwing himself against the opposite wall. “I won’t hurt you,” he says through the hand he’s using to cover his nose, desperately hoping it’s not wishful thinking.

Goentzel makes a disgusted sound. “You’re going to arrest me and throw me in some hole in the ground somewhere for the rest of my life. Death would be more merciful.”

Eggsy grimaces. He can certainly commiserate with the feeling. Still, he isn’t the one willing to sell dangerous weapons to the highest bidder. “V-tech almost destroyed the world. Why would you think we’d _ever_ allow it or any of its creators to have the chance to do so again?”

“That’s not what I had intended! We had developed it to _end_ wars, not start them! A weapon in and of itself is neither good nor evil, only what men use them for.”

“And do you really think the men you sell your weapons to will use them for good?” Eggsy snarls, happy that his good old human anger is gradually replacing the pangs of hunger, almost just as satisfying. Anger, he knows what to do with. Anger, he can handle.

“I was about to sell them to you, wasn’t I?”

“Well now you won’t be selling anything to anyone,” Eggsy says, pushing himself off the wall and grabbing the back of Goentzel’s neck once more, causing him to yelp. “Because we’ll be taking it off your hands to be destroyed. So much for your life’s achievements, yeah?”

But instead of cowering further, Goentzel only bitterly laughs, the sound reverberating throughout the tunnels. “Do you really think you were the first ones I’ve sold it to?”

 

_____

 

“That was irresponsible and idiotic of you,” Merlin says to him, not quite yelling, but near enough. Every note in his voice rings sour. The lines of his face are drawn deep in displeasure, gaze sparking bright with anger.

Eggsy’s first instinct is to cower in his chair, still not used to being at the wrong end of someone’s wrath, but just as soon, he’s angry right back, leaning forward and glaring at Merlin in defiance. “I got your rogue little scientist, didn’t I? If it weren’t for me, he’d still be in the wind!”

“And what did you tell Roxy about diving into an uncharted labyrinth of tunnels with no light, tracked down Goentzel, apprehended him, and made it all the way back without so much as a hitch? Luck?”

Not quite, but close enough. When Eggsy had emerged from the hole in the cellar, practically hurling Goentzel out of it, Roxy had only stared at him with incredulity and not more than a little awe, which had admittedly been flattering.

_“How the blazes did you…?”_

_“He weren’t too far ahead. Just had to follow his stumbling about. Simple.”_

There must be something of it in his expression, because Merlin only frowns harder. “You can’t show off like that, Eggsy. You will jeopardise _everything_ for not only yourself, but for Harry as well. Or did you even consider him at all? If you had meant to convince me you were ready for the field again, outright disobedience was not the way to go about it.”

The mention of Harry does him in as well as any blow could. All of Eggsy’s whiplash anger leaves him just as quickly as it came, leaving behind the guilt, the dread. His shoulders sink. He falls back into his chair, bowing his head. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t think. I just saw what been done to them mice. Like watching the church all over again, really, and it….”

A heavy silence falls over the room, at least until Harry leans forward and says, “Well then. Now that the bollocking is over, can we at least agree that Galahad not only successfully completed his mission, but forestalled what could have turned into more headaches down the line? To that I say, well done, Galahad. I know you wouldn’t have risked it had you any other choice, but your loyalty to Kingsman overrides even your most...shall we call them _baser instincts_?” Harry arches a brow. “Right then, let’s move on to a more pressing matter, such as who Goentzel already sold his weapons to?”

Beneath the table, however, Harry’s hand alights on Eggsy’s knee and squeezes it in comfort. When Eggsy meets his eyes, Harry gives him a brief smile that is quickly wiped off his face when Merlin turns to him.

“He’s currently being interrogated by Lancelot as we speak. I suspect it won’t take long and we’ll have the answers soon enough,” Merlin says stiffly.

“Very well,” Harry says before taking a deep breath and standing. “In that case, I’m taking Galahad home. He’s had an eventful trip and could use with a little rest and replenishment.”

Merlin eyes the both of them grimly. A corner of his mouth ticks, but all he says in response is, “I’ll let you know when we hear anything. Galahad, Arthur,” before his prompt exit. Eggsy can hear his angry stride all the way down the corridor and into the lift.

Once he’s gone, Eggsy feels like someone’s let in all the oxygen back into the room in one great rush, which is a bit ironic, considering he didn’t technically need it anymore. “That went well.”

“He’ll be fine,” Harry brushes off. “He’s just in one of his moods. Doesn’t like it when things go out of his control.” When Eggsy doesn’t say anything, Harry just holds out his hand. “Come on, then. Let’s go home, shall we?”

Eggsy looks up at him. _Home_. Theirs. He’s still reeling from the very thought, but it never fails to fill him with an immediate rush of warmth that blunts even the sharpest edges of his worries. He takes Harry’s hand and stands up. “Alright. Feeling a bit peckish.”

“You’ve cut it very close,” Harry lightly admonishes as they leave Arthur’s office and move through the manor, daringly hand in hand. “You require more than I do.”

“You should never have sent Rox with me if you didn’t think I could handle it.”

“I never doubted for a moment you could. Bringing in Lancelot wasn’t my idea.”

“She knows about us, by the way,” Eggsy confesses, and off Harry’s vaguely concerned look, clarifies, “I mean, not _that_. But _us_. As in, there being an _us_ in the first place.”

“Oh.” To Eggsy’s surprise, Harry doesn’t appear particularly troubled by that fact. “Well, I suppose that’s that then.”

“What? That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?”

In answer, Harry just holds up their hands and gazes at him darkly. “I would be just fine with the whole world knowing you were mine.”

A shiver runs down Eggsy’s spine, toes curling in his oxfords at the stark tone of possessiveness. “Bit un-P.C., that. This whole claiming business. Not a thing, you know. I’m me own person, I am.” He tries to keep a straight face, but still the beginnings of his smile slip through his facade. “With me own thoughts, and freedom, and will.”

“All very well and good,” Harry says, releasing Eggsy’s hand to touch his throat, right where he had first bitten into him in pain and terror, and then later in sheer arousal and desire. Eggsy swallows, leaning into Harry’s fingers, unable to help himself. “But there will always be a part of you that is mine.”

They are no sooner through the front door of Harry’s house when Eggsy grabs Harry by the shoulders and shoves him against a rare spot of wall not adorned with a piece of fussy furniture or some bland painting. He kisses Harry too hard, their teeth knock together and cut through Harry’s gums, causing them to bleed. Eggsy greedily laps at the taste in Harry’s mouth.

Harry’s hands come up, at first clinging to Eggsy just as fervently, then reluctantly pushing him back a little. There’s red-tinted saliva on his swollen lower lip. “Blood. You need….”

“Can’t it wait?” Eggsy almost pleads, pressing himself back up against Harry to coax him back into the swing of things, nosing along his jaw.

“We’ll both need it if we’re to….” Harry gestures, and it all dawns on Eggsy.

Right. Eggsy stares down at his traitorously untented trousers, realising that while the soul was willing, the flesh is weak. “Fuck,” he says before slumping against Harry. This would almost be embarrassing if he didn’t know Harry suffered from the same predicament.

“Yes, that is the goal,” Harry dryly says, kissing his temple. “Go upstairs and get ready. I’ll heat us up our supper.”

Not exactly dirty talk, but Eggsy hurries up the stairs anyway, shedding clothes as he goes so that by the time he’s reached Harry’s bed, _their_ bed, he’s as naked as a robin, splayed out over the covers right in the centre of it, three well lubricated fingers in his arse, stretching himself open. If he strains his wrist just enough, he can even brush over his prostate, but it does as much good for his stubbornly limp, pale cock as a pat on the head. In fact, the whole fingering business, which had once been part and parcel of his wanking routine, now feels about as sexy as a doctor’s exam.

He sighs and gives it up for a bad job, staring up at the blank white ceiling and letting himself not see or hear or smell anything at all. Just for once pretending he’s alive. Human. His heart beats. He is warm. He’s stomach is sated. His throat isn’t so dry it feels like it’s sticking shut. He’s young and his body unfurls so easily with desire.

Eggsy doesn’t know how much time has passed, but gradually he becomes aware of the fact that quite a bit of it has. His hunger becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. Frowning, he sits up and he starts to look for his dressing gown when he hears Harry’s footsteps on the stairs.

When Harry appears in the doorway, he’s not bearing any bags at all. He’s shed his coat, suit jacket, and tie, undid the top few buttons at his collar and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Shoes and socks got rid of too, from a quick glance at his feet. He’s fed, though: his skin is flush and lively. His eyes are bright. He’s practically vibrating with coiled energy.

“Forgetting something?” Eggsy asks, torn between confusion and annoyance.

But Harry just gives him one of his small, secretive smiles, the kind that Merlin deplores and makes Eggsy eagerly lean forward in anticipation despite himself. He watches Harry step slowly into the room, holding Eggsy’s gaze all the while, stopping just at the foot of the bed before climbing onto it, knees first. This close, he can smell the blood beneath Harry’s skin, how it changes his scent, turns it more copper, rich. Eggsy bites the inside of his cheek and presses a hand to his gnawingly empty stomach. At this point, he may even gladly take the bagged.

Then Harry raises a hand and pulls one loose side of his collar away from his neck, opening up access to a pale swath of skin.

Eggsy’s eyes widen, he sucks in a breath and forgets to exhale it.

“I’ve just had both yours and my own rations, so I’ve got a bit to spare now,” Harry says.

“You mean to let me….” Eggsy swallows, gaze lowering to Harry’s neck, unable to tear it away.

“Consider it a reward for a job well done.”

The words are barely out of Harry’s mouth before Eggsy is on him, grinning in anticipation as he noses at the juncture of his shoulder, breathing it all in and savouring the light heat emanating off Harry’s skin. Without much forewarning, his teeth sink swiftly in.

He braces himself against Harry’s instinctive bodily flinch, gripping Harry’s shoulders tight as if to hold him in place, though he knows Harry could easily break free from his grip should he so choose. But Harry doesn’t struggle, he leans into Eggsy, bringing a palm up to the back of Eggsy’s head to hold him in place, press him in closer, sighing, as the thick, velvety liquid floods Eggsy’s mouth almost faster than he can swallow it. It’s rich, complex, the mixture of Harry’s own special blood and whatever mere human’s Harry’s glutted himself upon. It’s the unique flavour Eggsy still longs for, the only solid thing he really remembers from those hellish nascent days. Endless torment and starvation, and then, like a cooling rain in the desert, the sporadic bouts of Harry’s blood on his tongue.

He can feel Harry’s erection against his thigh, can feel his own cock slowly fill and harden, rubbing up against the fine material of Harry’s trousers. He can feel his body come alive like it had been existing as little more than an old, abandoned house fallen into disrepair and someone’s just gone and opened up the windows to air it out. With great effort, not even close to satisfied yet, he pulls himself away from Harry’s neck to pull at his shirt. The material rips beneath the force of his hands, sending buttons scattering across the bed. “Come on. Come on, I wanna fuck. You said....”

“Yes, yes, alright,” Harry breathes as Eggsy moves to his trousers with just as little care as he had shown Harry’s shirt. “I can see my wardrobe bill is going to skyrocket.”

“Perhaps you can put it to Kingsman R&D. Design a fabric that’s both stylish and impossible to tear,” Eggsy grins, finally, with Harry’s help, divesting him of his last scraps of clothing. “Knife-resistant. _Us_ resistant.”

“Not a bad idea, actually.”

“Wouldn’t make this half as fun, though.”

Even with the fresh feeding, Harry’s body is still so very pale. The small smatterings of dark hair on his chest and thick, coarse curls surrounding his cock are a stark contrast against it. He’s always been slight, if immeasurably strong, all long, lean muscle and limbs. Eggsy skims his fingers over Harry’s chest, ribs, belly, all flat, hard, and taut. He circles his hand around Harry’s stiff cock, both soft and firm, cool, thick, leaking enough so that each time Eggsy thumbs the tip, he spreads more wetness down the shaft.

Harry watches him the whole time, silent and permitting of his explorations, barely keeping from shuddering when Eggsy strokes him, and then, like a thread drawn so tightly that it snaps, he springs into motion all at once, drawing Eggsy’s face closer, kissing him, breathing into his mouth, tongue sliding against his. His hands come to rest over Eggsy’s hips, stroking along the hollows, palming his torso, then sliding back around to squeeze his arse.

Eggsy sucks in a sharp breath when Harry’s fingers nudge between his cheeks, lightly skimming over his wet hole, circling, before pressing a finger in to feel how loose Eggsy’s already made himself, humming with approval. This time when fingers breach him there, it’s a slow burn, barely an ember that’s stoked into brilliant being, until Eggsy’s whole body lights up from the inside, until his breaths emerge as moans against Harry’s mouth, his hips jerking forward, then back, fucking himself on Harry’s long fingers to get more, cock head bumping into and brushing up along Harry’s hip, leaving a wet smeary trail.

Between the open mouthed kisses Harry keeps trapping his mouth in, Eggsy manages to more or less choke out, “Right, that’s it. Can we…? Now?”

“Yes, let me just—”

“Here….” Eggsy presses Harry’s shoulders in wordless nudges until his fingers come free and he’s lying prone on his back, blood dripping down his neck onto the pillows, laid out like the finest place setting, a feast set up all for him.

He retrieves the haphazardly discarded lube from where he had earlier tossed it to the side and slicks Harry up, root to tip, maybe getting a little too caught up in the moment because Harry grabs his wrist, hissing, “ _Alright_ ,” like he’s not going to last. 

Eggsy doesn’t think he is either. He throws a leg over Harry and reaches back behind him to guide himself onto Harry’s cock, feeling the blunt head against his entrance while Harry draws his own legs up for additional stability. For a moment, it doesn’t seem like Harry's cock will fit through such a tight hole, but Harry reaches up to grip his hips, urging him on, and Eggsy takes a deep breath and sinks down with concerted effort, mouth falling open when he feels the first thrumming ache of penetration. He has to stop almost as soon as he’s begun, Harry’s cock just barely past the ring of muscle, letting the burn fade by degrees.

“That’s lovely, you’re lovely,” Harry whispers, sliding his palms up and down Eggsy’s trembling thighs.

“Was planning,” Eggsy grunts, bearing down and letting Harry’s cock slide in another difficult inch. “On looking a whole lot sexier doing this.”

“My dearest.” Harry sits up a little, hand stretching out to cup Eggsy’s jaw, sliding his thumb across Eggsy’s lips, dipping in to smear crimson across them and drawing a trail from the corner of his mouth. “You have no idea the picture you make, do you?”

Eggsy turns his head, keeping his gaze locked with Harry’s, licking at the pad of Harry’s thumb before taking hold of his wrist and drawing it up to his lips. He kisses the thin, sensitive skin, feeling the ridge of veins running beneath, and bites down hard as he forces his hips down to take the rest of Harry into him.

They both cry out, Eggsy letting Harry’s blood spill overflow from his mouth and drip down his chin before his lips close around the wound and suck in earnest, clenching around Harry’s cock first and then slowly grinding his hips in small movements until he can feel Harry deep inside, brushing up deliciously against his prostate, as sensate as a live fire. The grip Harry still has on one hip tightens into five bright pinpoints of pain. Eggsy can feel him dig his heels into the mattress in order to gain the leverage to thrust his hips up, his greater strength forcing Eggsy to start up a bouncing rhythm, slow at first, gradually increasing into a swift percussive pace, all wet squelching of flesh, the sharp grunts and low moans that slip through Harry’s clenched teeth, and the profane sucks and slurps Eggsy makes of Harry’s wrist.

Eggsy feels like he’s being gorged from both ends, Harry’s blood flooding his throat, Harry's cock fucking up into him, until Eggsy feels like he’s been reduced to delirious sensation, starting within his groin and stomach, flaring outwards in growing waves.

It all topples over the precipice when Harry unclenches his hip and starts stroking Eggsy’s flushed red cock, barely able to make more than one slide up and down before Eggsy tenses, dropping Harry’s wrist from his stained mouth to wantonly moan, spilling across Harry’s stomach in spurts, hips still stuttering as if to wring out every last drop of pleasure.

Reality is jarred back into his awareness when Harry surges up and flips their positions with a deft show of strength and speed, not even slipping out, knees pressing hard into the backs of Eggsy’s thighs, forcing his legs to spread wider as Harry blankets him. His hands come round to Eggsy’s head, framing his face, painting red streaks across his cheeks, meeting and holding Eggsy's eyes as he starts to fuck him in earnest.

It’s all Eggsy can do but wrap his legs around Harry’s waist, heels digging into the small of his back, his hands clenching at Harry’s tensed arms as each breath is shoved out of him. Harry is a brute like this, hovering above him, driving into him, utterly possessing him. When he finally comes in Eggsy, it’s while swallowing Eggsy’s pained exhalations, licking them right out of his mouth along with the traces of his own blood.

It’s not like they need to catch their breaths, but the comedown still makes it feel like they should, clutching desperately to each other in a fading sense of unity, one whole slowly slipping back into their separate selves. Eggsy can almost imagine his heart is slowly calming in his chest, the endorphin high gradually receding, as all manner of discomforts and aches make themselves known.

Harry eventually slips out of him and rolls onto his back, and Eggsy can’t help rolling towards him, pillowing his cheek across Harry's chest. He turns his lips to smooth skin, licking at the drying streak of rusting flakes there, letting the taste singe across his tongue. They’re a right bloody mess—literally. Harry's expensively high thread count sheets are probably irrevocably ruined. There’s already the uncomfortable sensation of Harry’s come leaking from his sore arse, slipping down the insides of his thighs, but Eggsy feels, for once, momentarily satiated, even languorous.

“If this is the reward for a job well done, I’m gonna be the best agent you’ve ever seen,” Eggsy sighs.

When Harry laughs, Eggsy can feel his chest shake lightly beneath his head. “I do like to celebrate successes. Not only the mission, but proving Merlin wrong. That alone deserved a good congratulatory shag.”

Eggsy smiles, but finds it fading fast. “...I almost didn’t,” he whispers. “There was a moment and I just...I almost….”

Harry tips Eggsy’s face up so he can look Eggsy in the eyes and see the lingering fear there. “But you didn’t. You restrained yourself in the end. That’s the important thing. It’s not easy. It’s not ever easy. But in time, with practise, you do get better at it. Stronger. You know what to look out for, and there are ways to compensate.”

“Yet when it’s just the two of us...I even kinda like it,” Eggsy shyly admits. “I don’t have to contain myself with you. It feels good. It feels right.” No worry over hurting anyone. No fearing his own future, whether he’ll be deemed too dangerous to be free. Whether he actually _would_ be. “I wish it could be like this all the time.”

“I know,” Harry says, and Eggsy thinks there are traces of wistfulness in his voice, before the familiar guilt seeps back into his words. “I did this to you, Eggsy. Dragged you into this rather tightly controlled existence. I’ll never not be sorry for it.”

Eggsy frowns, scraping his teeth across his lip. He doesn’t know what he can say to assuage that guilt because he’s still not entirely certain how he feels about it yet either. “It’s been...horrible. And wonderful, sometimes.” There’s no beating heart beneath his ear, but Eggsy finds himself sinking into a soothing lull anyway, content to simply be close to Harry, knowing he’s alive, knowing they share something no one else in the world can.

Harry trails his fingers over the exposed rise of Eggsy’s shoulder, down his forearm, back up again, leaving a chilled echo in his wake. It reminds Eggsy very much of being back in their prison, and even though nearly all of his memories are indistinct, drenched in mindlessness and misery and hunger, there were still those quiet moments too: just the two of them holding onto each other against the whole damn world, it had felt at the time. “But before you came, Eggsy, my life was…” It’s a long pause before Harry eventually settles on, “...bleak. Long and tiring was all I had to look forward to when everyone I knew would grow old. Eventually die, one way or another. I’d held myself in check for so long, I’d forgotten what it was like to simply...enjoy. I didn’t think I was allowed. Sometimes I’m still not sure if I am.”

“Funny,” Eggsy says, lifting his head to rest his chin on Harry’s sternum. “That’s the way I’d been looking at the rest of my life when I thought you were gone. Don’t get me wrong, I love Kingsman, Harry. But you...it was you that made me...well. Made me, full stop.”

The smile Harry gives him is soft and sad. “Is that a good thing?”

Eggsy considers it for a long time. “It brought you back into my life again. I guess I don’t think I can bring myself to regret it.”

Harry opens his mouth, but before he can reply, a familiar beeping sounds from outside the bedroom, somewhere downstairs where Harry must have left his glasses. With an apologetic glance, Harry slides out from beneath Eggsy and leaves the room to retrieve them, not even bothering with a dressing gown, looking like he’s gone and decorated himself up in war paint, which makes for a nice view from Eggsy’s vantage point.

He follows the sound of Harry’s quick progress down the creaky stairs, hears the jangle of JB’s collar and his high pitched whine and then satisfied grumble as Harry scritches him behind the ears, and viciously clamps down on the spike of resentment he feels from it. There’s a rustling of fabric as Harry fishes around the pockets of his suit jacket, the slight click of the comms being answered. “Merlin.”

_Arthur. Goentzel broke. He only made one sale before we got to him._

“One is better than many.”

_That may well be, but I dare say knowing this sort of weapon is now in the hands of the Russians does not seem like much of a consolation._

“Well,” Harry says, processing the implications. “Shit.”

_Indeed._

 

_____

 

Somehow, Markova manages to emulate Harry’s most annoying character trait by being late even to greeting guests within her own home, although she surely has a better reason for it: an unexpected issue with one of the refineries, Eggsy had been told by the master of the household. Now he’s been plied with undoubtedly very good coffee and pastila he can neither drink nor eat and is left to wait. It’s a grey, moody late afternoon outside, so at least he doesn’t have to conspicuously cower from the large picture window.

For all that they made fun of General Petrov’s over-embellished boast of his mansion together, Markova’s home in the Golden Mile isn’t much better, Eggsy thinks. It’s, perhaps, more coordinated in colour: washes of pale blue trimmed in off-white. Less gold inlay anything and much, much less statues on the whole, but unimaginable wealth still oozes from every expensive curtain and cushion, from the large, formal portraits on the wall, the...whatever those things are that sit in the centre of bureaus and tables: a glass-blown sculpture here, a line of jewel-encrusted eggs there. Eggsy feels like he’s just stumbled into the middle of _Anna Karenina_ without realising it.

Ostensibly, he’s been invited to her home under the guise of an admirer who met her at a party where the two of them had hit it off, but so much has changed between the time of Petrov’s party and Kingsman reaching out to her again, asking for a meet. The request must have been unusual enough to pique Markova’s interest: up until now, the terms of communication had almost exclusively been the other way around.

The large, noisy clock on the mantle shows a full half hour has passed before Eggsy can hear a car being let through the front gates. He follows Markova’s journey from the front drive and through the door, coat and accessories peeled off her person by the help, receiving a quiet update on all that has transpired in her absence, including the patient presence of one Edward Langer upstairs. Her heart rate is light and fluttery as a bird’s, her voice sweet and kind, even to her employees. Her gait is quick and smooth, barely making a sound upon the floor, until he hears her walk down the hall, pause just outside the door with a steadying breath, then opening it to Eggsy with a composed smile. In the brighter daylight, the faint lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth are more noticeable, and without her heels, she is even more petite.

“Mr Langer. I apologise for my tardiness. I’m sure my staff explained to you what happened?” she greets as she crosses the room, extending one pale, slim hand.

Her scent hits him like a toppling wall, the ambergris slightly embittered with chemicals and petrol, but beneath that, something more. Something with her blood, honeyed and calling to him in a way he’s not ever experienced before. He can’t help drawing her hand up to his mouth, lips brushing against her knuckles, breathing in ever so subtly. Perhaps a mistake, that. It just makes him unexpectedly ravenous. “They did.” He strives to remain congenial. “I do hope everything is alright now?”

“Yes, very much so, thank you.” Over their still clasped hands, Markova stares at him, eyes too keen. “Something is different about you from when we last met.”

Eggsy inelegantly drops her hand and straightens.

“Your eyes spoke of loss, before,” she muses. “Now...now I can’t see much of anything, hmm.”

“Perhaps I’ve grown better at the job. Less heart on my sleeve?”

She reaches out and brushes at the invisible specks of dust on his suit jacket. Eggsy follows the trail of her hand down his arm. “Perhaps.” She gives him a slightly cheeky smile before inviting him to sit beside her on the settee, knees just a hair’s breadth from each other, her hands neatly folded in her lap, posture as perfectly straight as a ruler. “I take it you’re not here for mere pleasantries.”

“Ah, no. The tip you gave us a few months back….”

“Was the information good?” Markova asks.

“Unfortunately so,” Eggsy confirms. “We managed to stop the seller and confiscate most of the weapons. All but one.”

Her eyes widen, easily picking up on his implication. “You think the generals made the purchase.”

“We’re fairly certain of it. Russia’s practically been a black box since V-Day. A lot of the controls we had in place to uncover this sort of information were either destroyed, rooted out, or made redundant.”

“And now you need to know more, which is what you came to ask me for,” Markova concludes.

“Yes,” Eggsy says. “We wouldn’t have done so if it weren't so important.”

She bows her head, unfurls her fingers as if to examine her perfect manicure for any chips or cracks, but Eggsy can hear the way her heart picks up, the smallest change in her increased respirations. Fear, he realises, but he wouldn’t have known it by the way her voice emerges firmly and coolly confident. “Alright,” she says, looking back up at him. “I will do it. I know many of the generals. A little drink, a little music, pretty girls. They can be worse than chittering birds.”

Eggsy reaches out and covers one of her hands, squeezing it firmly enough to be reassuring, having never been so aware of his strength. How he could crush those fine bones in his fist with little more than a thought. “Please don’t do anything that would put yourself at great risk. It’s not worth it.” At least, he would argue as much.

“My dear Mr Langer, such has been my entire life,” she tells him, the edges of her smile tapering off into something more resigned before she laughs a little, covering his hand with her other one until they are all stacked together between them. “I’ve been accused of having very cold hands, but yours are like ice...!”

He snatches his away from hers in reflex, causing her to raise her brows in surprise. “You’re frightened,” she notes.

“No,” he harshly denies. “I’m sorry. Please forget it.”

“There really is something different about you,” she continues, heedless, daring even to reach out, hand caressing his cheek.

Eggsy thinks about Harry’s large palm sliding across his jaw, thumb roughly stroking his lips, how he had turned into Harry's wrist and sunk his teeth into that flesh, drunk deeply from it, his thirst being slaked mouthfuls at a time.

He feels his teeth descend, unable to stop it, that primal urge sharpening and coming to the forefront of his mind. He sees the moment when she sees the monster in his eyes.

She tries to pull her hand back like it’s been burned, but he’s faster, trapping her wrist, fingers gripping so tightly he can feel the bones and tendons grind together, relishing the way she gasps in pain, how her heart is racing, pounding in his ears, pushing that rich, hot blood through her veins. He could do it, drain her within moments, it would be so easy and so _good_.

“ _Please don’t_.”

It’s barely spoken above a whisper, but it could have been screamed directly into his ear for how much it cuts through him.

When Eggsy looks, really looks, he sees a delicate woman who is staring back at him in terror.

He pries his fingers off her wrist, stares in horror at the ring of red left behind, opens, then closes his mouth, before managing to choke out, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” before rushing out of the room.

He blindingly tears through the hall, down the stairs, doesn’t even stop to retrieve his coat and ignores the staff’s concerned calls after him. It's easy to clear the fence and emerge out onto the street. He runs fast, faster than any human ought, seeking only to put more distance between predator and prey. The image of her fear-lined face clings as stubbornly to him as the damp in the air.

By the time his steps slow, the sky’s gone darker with the onset of evening and the wealth of Markova’s neighbourhood has long since been replaced by impoverished brick low-rises and a proliferation of rubbish that burns in his nostrils. He has no idea where he is, fucking hell. 

_It’s okay. You stopped yourself in the end. It’s okay_ , he tells himself. But it’s not. There will be a next time, a time after that. Even if he does stop himself, he’ll alienate people. They’ll know to be afraid of him, rightly so. He’s not strong like Harry. Merlin is right. He’s dangerous. Maybe next time, he won’t stop.

He’s about to retrieve his Kingsman glasses from his pocket to ping HQ and ask for assistance (belatedly realising he had narrowly avoided a disaster by not having worn them earlier), when he hears their quiet, measured approach. Four of them, muttering to each other in Russian. When he turns around, he sees they’re in plain civilian clothing, large and fit, grim-faced and smelling of too may cigarettes smoked while lying in wait.

“What do you want?” he asks them point blank.

“You were with Rozalina Sergeyevitch, were you not, Mr Langer?” one of them says to him in heavily-accented English. It’s not much of a question, judging by the way they slowly begin to form a circle around him.

“I wasn’t aware visiting a friend was a cause for concern with the FSB,” Eggsy lightly says. At his sides, his hands ball into fists.

They don’t even bother justifying themselves. “I think you should come quietly with us now.” The suggestion is accompanied by two of them pulling their coats from their waists, revealing their weapons.

Eggsy doesn’t move. He can feel it emerging from the deep, rising up, ready to spring.

They come in at him all at once as professionals would, but it hardly matters. Once Eggsy lashes out, a fist connecting with a man’s nose, snapping the cartilage and inducing a spray of blood that pervades the air as sharp and pungent as tear gas.

It’s difficult to understand what happens after that. Everything is coloured in red. Everything smells like blood. He feels his monstrous self taking over, slipping into his skin like a well-worn glove, evading the clumsy, pathetic, _human_ attacks as easily as batting away flies.

Their necks tear easily, as soft and tender as veal.

He drinks and he drinks and he drinks and he _drinks_ and it's the most glorious thing he's ever experienced, always this.

When it’s over, what’s left of them lies sprawled around him in a red array, and him at the epicentre, soaked in their blood.


	5. Chapter 5

At some point during the night, the snowfall had turned to dreary rain, smothering the delicate white lace accumulating on the streets and pavement into small rivers of dirty, wet sludge and bleeding what few colours still dared to shine in the neighbourhood into a matte grey early morning. Eggsy had maintained a numb vigil at the opaque, grimy window of the Kingsman safehouse and watched the entire transition.

The flat, he logically knows, is frigid, the thermostat kept just warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing, but he hardly feels it. His breath doesn’t even emerge as streaming clouds of fog in the air as it would have done had he a higher core body temperature. It’s like he isn’t even there. He might as well have been nothing at all.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been since human awareness rose to the forefront of his mind like a seedling pushing up through the cracks in the pavement. In that single instance, he became aware of the hot wash of blood coating his body, how it harshly met the sharp bite in the air. He became aware of the taste of copper on his tongue, the swiftly fading _just_ satisfied sensation in his belly, and the contented rigour in his limbs.

It had been, overall, a _wonderful_ feeling, and therein lay the true horror, because there were so many dead bodies at his feet, killed in cold blood, for no other reason than the monster inside him had demanded it.

After, it was like viewing his life through a filmstrip shorn of many of its frames: fleeing the scene, trying to avoid onlookers and the CCTV cameras, breaking into one of the many Kingsman boltholes set up around the city, shedding his blood-soaked clothes and binning them with a mental note to burn them later. He showered next, making the water as hot as it will go. It’s shite water pressure, but the heat had sunk into him, luring him into a steamy daze, staring at the red-tinged water slipping down the drain.

He'd made use of the spare clothes stocked in the drawers: good quality trousers and a jumper in plain, solid dark colours, immemorable. Their musty, stale smell had filled his nostrils, but he focused on it like a palette cleanser, like a lifeline, trying to chase away the last dregs of adrenaline still whispering in his body.

He’s been too wired to do much more than pace up and down the bare bones flat, tension knotting in his stomach, knowing he should have checked in by now but fearing the inevitable.

They had to know what’s happened. Russia had increased their surveillance considerably after V-Day, even if Markova hadn’t told them first. Merlin would be furious. He’d throw Eggsy right back down into that windowless little room beneath the earth at best.

And at worst, he’d have Eggsy terminated for good.

Eggsy couldn’t go back, he realised. Not anymore. He had to run before it was too late. Harry would undoubtedly be upset at first, but he’d understand. He had hated imprisonment as much as Eggsy. Maybe sometime down the line, Eggsy could reach out to him again. They could reunite. Run off together. Be safe together, away from Merlin and Kingsman and all their worst impulses.

Resolve decided, Eggsy makes for the bedroom and easily pushes aside the heavy wardrobe to access the small safe hidden within the wall behind it. There is the standard quick escape kit: several passports and IDs, money in five different currencies, the usual Kingsman accoutrements of a gun, watch, lighter, and glasses, as well as a Kingsman-issued phone. He takes everything but the latter two items, packing them all into a rucksack and ignoring the way his hands shake.

He feels Harry’s presence before he sees or even hears him, an oppressive, invisible weight that tingles at the back of his neck and fills him with both comfort and terror. Eggsy whirls around, gun drawn and pointed, aimed right between Harry’s eyes.

“Eggsy.” Harry doesn’t move to attack or even come any closer. His face is grim, the line of mouth flat with unhappiness. “Please put the gun down.”

The gun wavers in Eggsy’s hands before he acquiesces, dropping his hands by his sides, tossing the gun onto the bed.

Mollified, Harry says, “Now. Explain.”

“I didn’t mean to do it, Harry.” He wills Harry to listen to him. To understand. “Not any of it. Markova suspected something was off. It threw me for a loop. I fled and then….”

“I know.” Harry’s shoulders sink in defeat. He looks so tired. Eggsy did that to him. “You should never have been allowed to see her again.”

“It’s not like you could have gone to see her anymore,” Eggsy says, frowning. “I let my control slip in front of her. I hadn’t meant to do that. She’d been so...I was upset, after. And then those men….”

“The scene’s been cleaned up,” Harry says, “But it’s likely the Russians already know what’s happened.”

“Are they hunting for me?”

“Nothing’s gone through the official channels. FSB was keeping eyes on Markova and followed you out of due diligence than anything. Whatever the cameras picked up of your presence, we’ve managed to erase so they shouldn’t have a clear image of your face. It’s just about the one Russian database Merlin’s been able to hack into.”

Eggsy relaxes just a little bit more. That’s one worry off his mind at least, however minor it is compared to the rest of his current problems.

Harry’s gaze lowers to his rucksack. Eggsy hadn’t managed to close it up all the way. “What did you think you were going to do?”

The wording puts him on edge. _Were_. As if he would no longer be able to. As if...Eggsy tenses back up again. “I know what Merlin said to you about finding a way to kill us.”

“I won’t let him kill you,” Harry says with a fierce determination that would have been reassuring once.

“But you’ll let him put me back in a cage?” Eggsy asks. When Harry hesitates ever so briefly, he adds, desperate, “I can’t go back to that. _I won’t_.”

“You almost blew your cover with an asset and killed those men in broad daylight. You only barely got out of this mess by the skin of your teeth,” Harry says in that honed, cutting way he has when he’s truly angry. Eggsy remembers it from their fight just before Harry had gone off to Kentucky to die, flinching from the sharpness of it, and upon seeing it, Harry backs down, softening his tone. “I’m starting to think Merlin was right. You aren’t ready yet.”

Eggsy looks at him in alarm. “It won’t happen again, Harry. It won’t. I’ll do better next time, I swear it!”

“We need to leave now,” Harry says, taking a step towards him. “You’re to return to Kingsman. Your field status will need to be re-evaluated.”

And that was that then. Somehow, Eggsy expected to feel more when the end came. But the knot in his stomach just quietly unravels and sets him free, adrift.

There certainly isn’t due process when it comes to Kingsman, and Merlin wouldn’t be merciful. If he went back, Eggsy knew, he’d never get to leave again. His life as a Kingsman was over any way he cut it, something he’d have to process later, now that the bottom has fallen out.

What is more critical now, however, is the question of his freedom. He still has control over that.

He launches into motion, aided by his preternatural reflexes, one hand grabbing for the rucksack and gun in a deft sweep of his arm, feet already moving to dodge around Harry, falling to his knees and sliding across the tiled floor beneath Harry’s outstretched, reaching arm. The nimble success of the manoeuvre surprises even him, but he hasn’t got the time to relish his success as he makes for the door, hand touching the cool metal of the knob before—

“ _Stop_.”

And just like that, everything in Eggsy’s body comes to a crashing halt. It’s not by his will, his body freezing in place like it’s suddenly encased in ice. He tries to get his feet to move, then his arms, _anything_. But nothing budges. He rages inside his own head, but it’s like the very blood in his veins has frozen.

 _He can’t move_.

“What is this?” he breathes, wishing he could turn and look back at Harry, spit at him, anything. “What have you done to me?”

He hears Harry’s light footsteps, feels the lightest brush of displaced air as Harry circles around to face him. He _does_ look regretful, but he doesn’t free Eggsy from his seeming spell. “I’m your creator, Eggsy. My blood runs through your veins and it will always heed me. When I said you were mine, I meant it. It’s not something I want to use against you, but I will if I must.”

It’s horrifying, is what it is. So much of his new vampiric existence has chipped away at or outright taken many treasured aspects of his life. And while the loss of each one had been difficult, he’d managed. Forged new ways of surviving, even finding joy where he could.

But this, losing his very will and control. Being made to obey Harry’s mere spoken word. This, he couldn’t tolerate. Not ever. “Release me, you fucking bastard.”

“You can move freely, but you won’t try and run again,” Harry informs him. There isn’t the weight of an order behind it, somehow Eggsy can tell the difference, but it’s simply a fact as plain as the weather.

Eggsy tentatively tests his agency, willing an arm to move, relieved to find the limb obeying his command once more. Now that he has control over his body again, he quickly backs away from Harry until he nearly trips and falls back onto the bed, managing to make it a more controlled fall into sitting position. His sack falls from his arm, crashing to the floor, forgotten, then the clatter of the gun follows it.

“You’ve taken everything from me,” he finally says to Harry, voice leadened with the dull wonder of it all.

He doesn’t even mean for the words to hurt Harry, but they do all the same. Harry flinches like they had been a physical blow, clenching his jaw, glancing quickly away.

 

_____

 

He’s not intentionally refusing to speak to Harry. He just doesn’t have anything to say to him or anyone anymore. Harry guides him out of the flat to the waiting inconspicuous car with a light touch to his shoulder, and Eggsy goes complacently. Harry’s right: he won’t try and run again. There’s simply no point. He can’t outrun Harry’s will. He can’t outrun who he is.

The drive to the airport is uneventful, plagued only by light traffic caused by construction. Eggsy remembers the last time they were in a vehicle together when the world had been frighteningly large, Eggsy drowning out the noise by narrowing his senses down to other cars on the road, selectively listening to everyone’s conversations. He does so again, desperate to soak up every last ounce of dwindling freedom, but all he hears are conversations in Russian that he can’t really understand.

When they board the jet, Harry guides him to sit on one of the long sofas before taking the seat beside him, not even allowing for a polite gap of space between their bodies as he wraps his arms around Eggsy and pulls him into an embrace. Eggsy immediately stiffens and tries to resist for all of a second before he finds himself sagging into Harry’s arms, resting his forehead against Harry’s shoulder. Despite the bleakness of his impending future, Harry’s touch feels soothing in ways he can’t explain, a tourniquet if not the bandage. “You’re going to lock me away.”

“No,” Harry says, arms tightening. “I will never let him do that to you again. Either of us. But you can’t try to run away again, Eggsy. It will only confirm for Merlin that you can’t be trusted and he’ll resort to more extreme measures.”

“I’ll never get to go out in the field again. I’ll never be an agent again.”

“You will when you’re ready,” Harry refutes calmly. “And you will be ready one day, Eggsy. This isn’t forever. Even I had to learn how to adapt after the change.”

Eggsy tries to imagine Harry feeling like this, teetering on some precarious tightrope between restraint and disaster, every step threatening to tip him over. “Did you ever…? Hurt someone because of it?”

Harry remains quiet for a long time. His silence alone would have been telling, but finally, he says, “Yes. I’ve slipped. More than once.”

It’s on the tip of Eggsy’s tongue to ask about those times. _More than once_. It instills a flash of resentment too: Harry had slipped, more than once, and yet still had been permitted out in the field, free to come and go as he pleased. Eggsy’s reviewed Harry’s mission logs almost obsessively—there had only been a handful of larger gaps between missions, but those had been down to recovering from more grievous injuries, Harry had once explained. The ones that should have, by all rights, killed him.

None of this new knowledge stops the jet from its steady progress back to England, though. Harry forces a warmed bag of blood into his hands somewhere along the way and Eggsy drinks it mechanically. It tastes even worse than he’d been expecting, especially after having so recently had it fresh from the source, hot and fresh and pulsing.

No, Eggsy couldn’t dwell on such thoughts anymore. He wasn’t to have that, not ever again. Not if he wanted to keep the rest of his life intact. He knew how easy it was to slip into dependence on something, be it drugs or adrenaline or hope. 

When they finally drop beneath the earth into Kingsman’s underground hangar, Merlin waits for them in person, and Eggsy knows whatever is to happen, it will be bad. Merlin doesn’t say anything, even when Harry walks Eggsy down the stairs to stand before him. He simply lets his flat gaze sweep over them before issuing a curt, “Come with me,” before turning and walking away.

“Let’s go,” Harry murmurs, coaxing Eggsy to follow with his light but continuous touch, this time between Eggsy’s shoulders. There’s no inducement behind the words either because there doesn’t need to be: he’d have an easier time escaping from the Bank of England’s gold vault.

They move through the heart of Kingsman’s operations, and for a second Eggsy fears they are headed back down into the lower sub-levels, but at the critical juncture, Merlin takes a left instead of the right that is necessary to bring them to the requisite lift and Eggsy is left feeling shakily relieved but put further off-kilter.

Where they end up is Merlin’s private office, the one he rarely spends time in unless it’s to have a confidential conversation like they’re about to have. Eggsy reckons most of those conversations had involved Harry over the years. He doubts any of them had been pleasant.

“As of yet, we’ve managed to at least confirm that FSB is trying to track down the murderer of its four operatives. Fortunately, they have little to go on save for a half-remembered description of seeing the assailant on the live feed,” Merlin begins once the door is closed. “As it is, this will probably mean the attention on Markova will increase substantially.” 

“She’s been playing this game for decades,” Harry says. “She’ll be fine. She knows how to handle them.”

“Still, we’ve brought trouble directly to her doorstep. We’ve even let it into her home,” Merlin says, pointedly glancing at Eggsy. “It’s not going to make what we’ve asked her to do for us any easier.”

Eggsy grinds down on his teeth to leech the hottest edges of his reflexive anger. He doesn’t have the right to be angry. This is all his fault after all. “Then take me off the case. Send Roxy. Markova probably...probably doesn’t want to see me anymore anyway.”

At that admission, Merlin pins him to the spot with a forbidding look. “What happened? You were miles away from Markova’s neighbourhood when your little murder spree went down. Did you hurt her?”

“ _No_.” Eggsy scowls, unable to help feeling indignant despite the legitimacy of Merlin’s concern and what he has to admit to next. “No. But she started to suspect something was wrong and I might have...she may have seen something. For not more than a moment, but...I think she saw I wasn’t….”

 _Human._ It didn’t need to be voiced.

When Eggsy looks to Harry, Harry’s expression is unreadable. His eyes, dark and alive with some mixture of worry and despair, are the only thing Eggsy can latch on to. “You’re not to see her again,” Harry says decisively.

Eggsy swallows and nods. He’d figured as much, but the confirmation of his worst fears—he’s really blown it, hasn’t he? Failure. Disappointment. _Same old screw up, Unwin_ —isn’t exactly uplifting at the moment.

“In fact,” Merlin adds, his tone turning imperious. “You’re not to leave Kingsman grounds at all for the foreseeable future.”

“Not even to go home?” Eggsy asks with a hint of incredulity. “Not even to see my family?”

“You’re lucky I’m not putting you back down in the sub-levels,” Merlin says. “But you need to stay where you can be monitored and secured quickly if need be.”

Before Eggsy can open his mouth to tell Merlin where he can shove it, Harry steps in. “It’s only temporary, Eggsy. We’ll work on exercises to help you maintain better control—”

“We all know it’s not just temporary,” Eggsy snarls, glaring at the two of them. “You can’t trust me, nevermind how many times _you_ fucked up and still have your freedom,” he says to Harry, vindictively relishing the way Harry can’t hold his gaze, “So it’s back to being a prisoner, innit? Only, I guess the cage has been made a little nicer.”

“Yes,” Merlin tells him honestly. “You may choose to see it that way. Because tell me this, do you even feel remorse for those men you killed? They were men with lives of their own. Some of them had families.”

“Of course I do!” Eggsy says. “They were just doing their job and I…” Slaughtered them. Drained them. Thought them little more than sustenance.

“Enough,” Harry says. “Men who work for the secret police in authoritarian regimes are hardly bleating innocent lambs and you know it, Merlin. Stop trying to manipulate him. He knows what he’s done.”

“The point,” Merlin says, “Is that right now, Eggsy is a danger to those around him, good or ill. But even leaving aside questions of morality and justice, he very nearly exposed both himself and this organisation, and that’s grounds enough for bringing him to heel.”

“I’m not a fucking dog,” Eggsy spits at him.

“No,” Merlin agrees. “Dogs are at least predictable. You’re something worse.”

It feels like a slap to the face. Eggsy can’t even speak.

“I said _enough_.” Harry doesn’t shout, but his voice cut through the thick tension aptly enough that even Merlin blinks and seems to come to his senses. “Eggsy, I’ll show you to your room and fetch some of your things from home.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll get someone else to help with taking out your rubbish. Guess you get your house back to yourself after all. Well done. Master class.” Eggsy sneers at Harry, ignoring Merlin entirely, before promptly leaving.

 

_____

 

He’s assigned to one of the guest bedrooms on the second storey, in the furthermost corner, and as far as prisons go, it’s certainly one of the nicest ones he’s had to involuntarily stay in. It’s almost as large as his old flat at the estate with not only a four-post bed and accompanying five-piece ensuite, but a writing desk, both a wardrobe and dresser, and a whole fucking fireplace and stuffed leather chairs in front of it for a wealth of choices on which to park his arse, Eggsy supposes.

Then again, he’ll need the variety if he’s to spend the rest of his life within these walls. As it is, the large picture window overlooking the grounds is blotted out by the thick curtains, the small bar with its expensive libations must remain untouched, and cold or heat, it hardly makes a difference. Human comfort is wasted on the likes of him.

Eggsy spends his first night splayed out on the bed because he’s never let his limbs simply sprawl out on something so big. He had a sliver of a bed when he’d been poor, never even did achieved more than a restless doze in any of the sumptuous hotels he’d stayed at during missions, and even when he moved into Harry’s home and had access to his much larger, so obviously indulgent bed, something kept him to one side only, the side that hadn’t been Harry’s, because it seemed disrespectful otherwise.

Now he extends his limbs to each corner of the mattress like a starfish and stares up at the blank white ceiling, trying to quiet his mind and sleep.

He doesn’t even know if he and Harry actually really sleep anymore. He hasn’t felt the tell tale signs of exhaustion that would normally drag his eyelids down and tunnel his consciousness since his death and rebirth. He’s feels mental tiredness certainly. Maybe even existential weariness. Maybe even plain old ennui, but physical exhaustion is now elusive. Time just seems to slip by and when he achieves the equivalent of sleep these days, it’s simply because he stops paying attention to its passing.

Days go by like that.

Though there doesn’t appear to be anything to stop him and no one’s told him he can’t leave, Eggsy refuses to emerge from his room, not even to let the maid clean it. His meals are brought to him in a hot thermos by the house staff who probably think he has an unusual fondness for soup, but they don’t ask any questions and Eggsy never says anything more to them beyond a polite thank you.

Harry comes by at least once a day, just to see how he is, holding desultory conversations about the weather, how JB’s developed a fixation on birds and barks up a storm every time he sees one, or relaying the latest ridiculous thing Tristan’s gone and done. Nothing of importance, of course.

Sometimes Eggsy will catch him staring like Eggsy is his greatest mistake, a reminder of all his failures. It pisses Eggsy off so much sometimes that he shouts at Harry to get the fuck out, and Harry does.

But Harry always comes back.

Eggsy tries to ignore him after the bad days, but it’s difficult. Something within him always lights up in Harry’s presence. He always feels like he can breathe again when Harry is near.

So sometimes he’ll compromise with only acknowledging Harry by accepting the thermos he brings with him.

And sometimes he’ll feel so lonely and he’ll miss Harry so much that he’ll take the thermos, open it, and offer it back.

The first time it happens, Harry looks at it, then Eggsy, in question.

Eggsy had to explain, slowly and meaningfully, “I’d rather have you.”

He’d been so pleased when Harry’s eyes darkened with intent.

Harry never fails to give him anything he wants, Eggsy is starting to realise. Not when it’s within his power to do. He knows Harry feels as if he owes Eggsy a debt he’ll never be able to repay. Maybe at one point in his life Eggsy would have felt bad in taking advantage of that, but he can’t find it within himself to feel regret when Harry loosens the knot of his tie and undoes the top buttons of his shirt to reveal the pale line of his neck.

Harry’s blood still tastes rich and heady, burning on Eggsy’s tongue like the finest scotch. There are traces of sandalwood and rich leather books from Arthur’s office on his dry, cool skin. Harry’s heavy breaths are interspersed with low moans from his his throat; he always tries to silence himself before the full breadth of the sound can slip past his lips. Eggsy loves to hear it, self-restraint battling with liberation. He loves the thought of being Harry’s breaking point.

There’s just enough width in the seat of those posh leather chairs before the fireplace for Eggsy’s knees to straddle Harry’s thighs as he rides Harry’s cock, feeling plundered with every rise and fall, hissing at the way Harry’s fingers pinch harshly into his hips, licking into Harry’s blood coated mouth, chasing the brief and finite moment where he can lose himself, feeling like he’s everything and nothing at once.

 

_____

 

On Day Whatever, Roxy visits him. Her face betrays visible surprise at the pristine nature of the room with only the top duvet of the bed slightly dishevelled as evidence anyone had been staying in it at all.

“I’ve been told you haven’t left the room since you’ve been here.” She doesn’t spend any noticeable amount of time on any one thing, but he knows she’s missed nothing, trained spy that she is. “And that you’ve been ill. How are you feeling?”

Finally, her gaze ends up on him where it stays, studying his face and retracing all the signs she had seen before. There is concern and questions in her eyes, but she’s too polite to voice them.

He looks back at her and listens to her heart beat steadily, unbothered and unfearful of him. Strong, beautiful, kind Roxy who never looked at him like he was rubbish even when he’d been hot-tempered and ignorant of all the finer, civilised things in life. Would she still look at him like a friend if he divulged everything now? He’s tempted.

And yet.

She’s his best mate like Merlin is Harry’s, and just like Merlin, he knows she is loyal to Kingsman and to the people she’s chosen to protect above all. Even above him.

“Better,” he says, trying to give her a reassuring smile. “But I fear it’s a bit more...complicated than that. Looks like I’m gonna be benched for awhile.”

Her brow dips in worry. He probably just made it sound as if he’s got terminal cancer. “Will you eventually be alright…?”

“Yeah— _yes_. Sorry.” He shakes his head ruefully, running a hand over his face. “It’s not what you’re thinking, Rox. Promise.”

The worry doesn’t completely evaporate, but she does her best to smile back in acceptance anyhow. “Can you still spar? Work out? Do something with me to get you out of this room for a bit?”

He’d have to learn how to temper himself, not only to not hurt her but to prevent any suspicions from forming. It’s not something he really ought to even be doing yet until he’s got a better handle on himself but he has to start somewhere, doesn’t he? If he’s to have even a snowball’s chance in hell of reclaiming his life again…. “Yeah, I think so. That’d be good.”

“Good.” Roxy smirks. “I’ll see you down on the mats in fifteen? It’s been too long since I got to kick your arse.”

This time when Eggsy tries to smile, it’s easier. “You won’t take pity on an ill man?”

“You said it yourself,” Roxy shrugs. “You’re going to be fine.” 

 

_____

 

It gets both easier and harder. Once Eggsy leaves his room, he finds himself never wanting to return to it.

He spars with Roxy and walks a careful line between losing convincingly but not so frequently or easily that she’d be worried about his health.

There are the jogging paths that run throughout the grounds across all manner of terrain.

There’s the outdoor obstacle course that he remembers having left him absolutely shattered at the end of each day when he’d been a recruit.

They’re all too easy now, but Eggsy goes through them anyway, constantly, mindlessly. He hates to be still.

And then there are the seemingly endless hours of night when the civilised world sleeps and the rest of the world sparks to life. Nocturnal animals, large and small, birds of prey, insects.

He doesn’t tell anyone that he’s been stalking a herd of deer that have migrated into the area now that the weather’s beginning to warm.

Not hunting though. He doesn’t want to scare them away forever.

They’re lovely, graceful creatures with long legs and a sense of cautious quiet about their existence. Eggsy keeps low in the bushes, always downwind, as they graze and sleep and spend a significant portion of their waking lives in a constant state of alarm.

Their only tool of survival is their innate sense of fear and their swiftness and sureness of foot, and even those things are no match for him should he want to kill and rend flesh from bone, to drink, to wipe out the whole damn group of them and still be left wanting.

But there’s something soothing about letting all his instincts rise to the surface and hover there, unfulfilled. Honing his senses among the brilliant night time tapestry of noises and scents, but not letting them get the best of his control. It’s him finally getting some of this damn practise at self-restraint in.

It’s the most peaceful he’s ever felt since this whole nightmare began, but he doubts Merlin would see it that way.

 

_____

 

One very early morning when the sky is only just starting to brighten and it’s still cold enough to leave a light blanket of frost on the ground that will dissipate with the first rays of sun, Eggsy walks back to the manor from another long night out in the woods and sees Harry waiting for him on the veranda beneath the dim outdoor lights.

His face is mostly in shadow but for a halo of light outlining his slim body. He’s holding a lead, and at his feet sits JB, open mouthed and panting.

Eggsy’s steps slow.

“I thought maybe you’d like to see him,” Harry says.

JB doesn’t growl or bark at him, at least, but he also doesn’t strain at his lead in any attempt to rush up to him either as he once would have. Eggsy attempts a disaffected shrug. “Does it matter? As far as he’s concerned, I’m still not his owner.”

“He’ll never be reacquainted with you if you don’t try,” Harry says before digging in his coat pocket and retrieving a small plastic bag filled with JB’s favourite treats. He holds it out, capturing both JB’s and Eggsy’s interest. “I hear the way to a dog’s heart is through its stomach.”

After a brief moment of hesitation, Eggsy cautiously draws near, wary that he’ll set JB off at any moment. He uses his arm to bridge the gap, extending it as far as he can reach to pluck the treats from Harry’s fingers, which also means JB’s focus now centres on him. Once he opens the bag, the smell of beef grows stronger. JB stands up, curly tail starting to wag, eyes solely focused on his hands.

Slowly, Eggsy crouches down and holds out a treat. “Hey boy. I know these are your favourite, yeah? Do you want one?”

JB sniffs at the air, almost confused by the tantalising scent of the treat intermixed with Eggsy’s undoubtedly strange one. “Come on. Come here, boy.”

Still, the force of a dog’s stomach is a mighty one. JB angles his whole body towards Eggsy’s hand, then cautiously takes a few steps forward, nose first, sniffing at the treat in Eggsy’s hand before he opens his mouth and his jaws close around it.

“That’s a good boy. That’s a good boy, JB.” Eggsy lets it go, unable to stop himself from smiling as JB backs away, eating it in a few crunching snorts.

The second treat leaves his hand much more quickly, and this time JB simply gobbles the thing down right at Eggsy’s feet. It’s too tempting not to tentatively run his fingers over his soft fur, scritching behind his velvet ears.

“JB,” Eggsy sighs, a sound that falls from his lips in something like a sob or laughter, falling fully to his knees to bend down and rest his cheek against JB’s round skull while he noses at the open bag still in Eggsy’s hand and paws at it.

Eggsy feeds him every damn treat in the bag and lets JB lick his fingers after because JB lets Eggsy pet him and bury his nose in his fur in return. “I’ve missed you. Have you missed me? Do you remember me? I’m still me. I promise. I’m here.”

In response, JB sniffs his face and gives his cheeks a few cautious licks and Eggsy just holds onto him harder.

He looks up at Harry to find him watching them, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Thanks.”

And Harry, damn gentleman that he is, just tips his head, like it was his pleasure, but then, maybe it really was.

 

_____

 

The weather is just starting to tip into the first blush of spring when Eggsy is called into Arthur’s office, officially. It’s been so long since he’s put on a full suit, of putting on the full persona again, that Eggsy half feels like an imposter walking through the halls, even with JB back at his side, keeping pace.

But the staff greet him by codename like nothing’s changed and gradually Eggsy’s shoulders relax and the tight clench of his stomach eases so that by the time he knocks on Arthur’s door, awaits permission to enter, and proceeds on through, his spine is straight, his shoulders are back, and his game face if firmly on.

Harry is seated at his desk, and Merlin, who Eggsy has made an effort to avoid over the last few months, stands rigidly next to him. There’s an unresolved, crackling intensity in the air that makes it obvious they’ve been arguing.

Their combined presence is almost enough to make Eggsy’s calm falter, but he forces himself to stand directly in front of them, hands clasped behind his back. “Arthur,” he greets, then, more grudgingly, “Merlin.”

“Galahad,” Harry greets in turn. It’s to be that type of meeting then which feels actually...nice. Official. Eggsy hasn’t been treated as an actual competent agent in far too long. “Please sit.”

Eggsy does and folds his hands together in his lap while JB takes his customary two revolutions around him before settling down at his feet. Eggsy glances at him and takes comfort in his presence, now that he has him again. Might as well get on with it. “Am I being sacked?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Harry appears startled while Merlin just grimaces. So that’s a no then, at least.

“I suppose I can’t think of any other plausible reason for me to be called down here.”

“We’ve been reviewing your progress. You’ve been regularly sparring with Roxy and other agents with no further incidents,” Harry says. “Not even when they drew blood.”

“You told me I needed to learn self-control. I’m trying.”

Harry tilts his head in consideration. “How do you feel?”

He’s tempted to feign ignorance just to be difficult, but in the end, he puts thought into his answer. “Better. More...settled. I know I was angry at first, but I think maybe you were right. I did need the time to adjust.”

“I’m grateful to hear it,” Harry says, and then without any further preamble, asks, “Would you like to return to the field again?”

Eggsy tries not to react, but he isn’t fast enough to maintain a blasé demeanour, fears his mouth had dropped open for too long, breath catching in his throat in surprise. “Only if you think I’m ready.”

“Do you feel ready?”

“I don’t know anymore,” Eggsy answers honestly, a sinking feeling weighing heavy in his stomach now. “I thought I did, but if anything these past few months have taught me is that I was overconfident.”

Merlin clears his throat like he’s had enough of the entire conversation. “Markova has confirmed the Russians purchased Doctor Goentzel’s tech. She’s managed to secure an invitation to a military demonstration and it may be our last chance.”

Eggsy looks to Harry. “You said you didn’t want me seeing her again.”

Harry sighs, but the look he flashes Merlin is baleful. So that was the argument they were having. “I don’t.”

“Markova requested your presence,” Merlin explains, ignoring the venomous look aimed in his direction. “She says you’re the only one she trusts. And it’s too critical an operation to argue with her now. As much as it pains me to say it, we don’t have any other options within our limited timeframe, and believe me, I’ve looked.”

“I don’t understand. I frightened her the last time I saw her. I almost….” Eggsy waves a hand to indicate the rest, unable to bring himself to cement it into words.

Harry leans forward and stares at him intently. “You need to be careful with her, Eggsy. She’s more than what she takes great care to seem.”

“Yeah, I think I’m starting to get that.” Harry’s grim look doesn’t lessen. There’s more to the story there, he thinks, and once again finds himself inundated with both curiosity and more than a little jealousy of their long history.

He wants to ask Harry about it, opens his mouth to do just that, but Merlin continues, “Unfortunately, the details on this op are worryingly less than ideal. We don’t know where the demonstration is taking place. It’s likely that our only shot at securing Goentzel’s tech will be in front of a dosen-plus Russian military officers within the middle of a highly secure facility so it’s safe to assume subtlety won’t be an option so much as sheer brute force.”

And, yeah, Eggsy’s starting to see why he’s being allowed to carry this mission given the almost 100% mortality rate for anyone else.

“This would normally warrant a full cross-team effort, but our access is severely restricted. Only Lancelot will accompany you on this mission.” Merlin gives him a pointed look. “I trust you will look out for your team member without arousing her suspicions.”

“Will we endanger Markova with this mission?” Whatever reservations Harry had in regards for her, she was still a civilian and had done so much for Kingsman already. It would be rather bad form to bring the wrath of the Russian regime upon her in thanks. “We’re coming in as her guests.”

“We posed the same question,” Merlin says. “But Markova assured us she’d be able to take care of herself when this was all over. I trust she’s competent enough to make it happen.”

“You can’t come up smelling like roses,” Harry darkly mutters, “Without having to crawl through a bed of shit.”

 

_____

 

Markova picks them up at Sheremetyevo in a reinforced armoured SUV like she’s taking no chances, even though she’s inviting one of her greatest threats right into the backseat with her.

She’s as put together and polished as she’s always been, pale and pink cheeked, dressed for the still frigid Moscow weather in a deep burgundy shawl and black leather gloves. She smells like lavender this time and, as always, sweetness. It’s a familiar pull to his senses, but he ruthlessly squashes the instinct with the well practised ease he’s picked up in the last few months. 

“Hello again, Mr Langer,” she greets when their eyes meet and it takes everything he has not to look away first. If her heart beats a little faster than usual, she doesn’t show it.

And if Roxy notices anything amiss, she doesn’t mention it, only leaning over to offer Markova her hand. “Hello, Ms Markova. My name is Hannah. I’m an associate of Edward’s.”

“And, I’m sure, every bit as skilled. Hello, Hannah,” Markova says smoothly, taking Roxy’s hand.

“You could say that,” Roxy tells her. “You’re aware of our goals for this demonstration.”

“I’ve been briefed on what to generally expect,” Markova says. “My driver will have the car ready. I’ll stay near the exit. Duck and stay down when it all goes to shit?”

“We’re going in with a lot of elements that still remain unknown. The last thing we want is for you to wind up as collateral damage,” Roxy says.

“I trust in your ability to keep me safe,” Markova says, gaze darting to Eggsy.

After that, it’s a nearly three hour drive to whatever site the military’s set up for the demonstration, most of it spent in only barely tolerable silence. Eggsy keeps his focus on the barren stretches of winter-gripped land outside the tinted windows. He can feel Markova’s gaze intermittently resting on him and, with more curiosity, Roxy’s.

He gets a bad feeling in his gut when they pull up to a heavily fortified prison complex surrounded by barbed wire fencing and guard towers. There are hundreds of disgruntled voices inside.

“How are they testing the tech?” he suddenly asks.

Markova only shrugs, not wholly concerned. “I was not given that information.”

When they step out of the SUV, one of the generals is waiting for them, an older man who smells of cigars. He’s thick set, distinguished in appearance, and objectively handsome if somewhat severe looking, but Eggsy can see the pleasure sparkling in his eyes when Markova rushes up to greet him with a kiss upon each cheek. From his readings, he knows him to be General Nikolaev, one of the more senior ranking officials among the ruling class, a man who had been an admirer and protector of Markova for years.

“She’s saying we’re her assistants,” Roxy whispers to him, explaining the dialogue transpiring between them. “We won’t be introduced. Less memorable that way. Stay close behind them.”

Nikolaev accompanies them and acts as their credentials to clear the various checkpoints, each one marked by a set of forbiddingly thick steel gates and manned by several armed guards. Eggsy can practically feel Roxy growing more tense as their once hoped for clean exit moves further and further out of reach.

They end up somewhere deep within the prison itself where the lighting becomes more sparse and the air is pungent with the scent of rusting metal, astringent chemicals, and human excrement. There’s a constant barrage of shouting and banging that echoes down the corridors, from guards and prisoners alike.

Roxy and Eggsy follow Markova up a series of narrow stairwells to find themselves on a high mezzanine overlooking what must be the prison yard. The whole retinue is there: General Petrov, at least a dozen men in crisply ironed uniforms bearing innumerable badges and medals along with their far younger escorts, various other military and prison personnel. There’s a table banquet spread situated along the far wall and even a well-frequented bar, like this were all some sort of show for entertainment.

Eggsy dares to peer over the edge and sees about fifty prisoners milling about the barren yard below like mice.

“Shit,” he says.

“This is a prison for political prisoners.” Next to him, Roxy looks similarly grim at what is going to happen, knowing equally well that there is little they can do right now to stop it. There are no eyes on the tech yet.

As if thought could manifest deed, a hush falls over the mezzanine as two army officers part through the crowd, one bearing a very familiar looking device. The officer carefully sets it down on an empty table set up against the parapet and salutes Petrov before falling back into line with the other military officers.

Petrov looks over the assembled audience, his mouth naturally carved into a sneer, and launches into a barked out speech that Eggsy can only glean a few words of. But it’s easy enough to pick out the terms and phrases appealing to nationalism and vanquishing one’s enemies whilst restoring glory and honour back to the homeland. That and other such pages from the autocratic handbook, Eggsy would assume.

“The demonstration is about to begin,” Markova quietly tells them as she approaches, a glass of champagne in hand and an easy smile on her face that’s only slightly marred by the pinch around her eyes. “They control the device from up here but have placed transmitters in the yard. I am assured that we are situated far enough away from the signal not to be affected. The ones down below, however….”

He and Roxy ought to launch their assault now, Eggsy thinks, before the device can be activated. Only there are at least fifty different guns in the vicinity alone and probably just as many individuals who know how to use them. He’d probably be alright, Kingsman armour or no, but it’s a decidedly less certain outcome for Roxy, Markova, or any of the unarmed civilians in their midst.

Too risky. Far too risky.

As if Roxy knows what he’s thinking, she turns into him and mutters, “We can’t do it here. There are too many people.”

Thus they are made to stand by helplessly as the rest of the audience remains captivated by Petrov’s ceremonial like procedure, turning with military precision to Goentzel’s device and, with a victorious flourish, activating it.

Eggsy hears Markova inhale and hold her breath.

No one speaks. Only Eggsy can hear the chorus of rapid heartbeats. The prisoners below remain mellow and resentfully bored until—

Strangely, he’s reminded of those stupid YouTube videos of flash mobs suddenly breaking out into motion within some formerly sedate setting. In one moment there is an almost serene quality to the world, the next, it’s all unexpected, frenetic chaos.

The prisoners are on each other like ferocious animals, tearing into flesh, punching, kicking, biting with intense, concentrated viciousness.

There’s a flash of memory: the church, nimbly cutting down others left and right, gracefully dancing through the violence around him while aiming his gun at vital organs.

Not _his_ memory, but it he had virtually seen it through Harry’s eyes.

It’s just as nerve-wrackingly horrible now, the blood being spilled across the dirt, the noises of nonverbal, inhuman fury being growled from their throats, underscoring the screams and cries of pain.

Eggsy’s no longer viewing human beings. He’s watching destruction in cascading chain reaction.

At least the military officers had been correct in their calculations—they were out of range of the signal, gawking rubberneckers made to witness the bloodsport below, some are even riveted, _aroused_ , and below, _below_ ….

It’s a low buzz at first, an irritant, like a mosquito he tries to bat away, only it doesn’t fade. It grows _larger_ , expanding, a thick and syrupy red blanket thrown up in his mind slowly enveloping him.

Everywhere it touches he can’t shake it off.

He’s _sinking_ and—

And then he’s _furious_.

Bones snap as easily as twigs in his hands. Skin is cut through as soft as butter.

Bullets pelt at him, but they are no more irritating than biting flies, and it’s simple enough to take their skulls between his hands and _twist_. Others, he pushes over the balcony to the feeding frenzy below.

_Turn it off! Turn the damn thing off!_

So many screams and hearts race and it’s like pawing at rodents, silencing them one by one. They half do the work, stampeding over each other for the stairs, bottlenecking.

He moves too fast for them. Is too strong for them.

Then he sees her, long pale neck, silver blond hair, wide terrified eyes, and his fury increases.

He hates her most of all.

He launches himself across the distance and broken bodies between them, wraps a blood stained hand around her throat and squeezes, wanting nothing more than to rip her damn head off and—

And then he’s falling off a cliff, the precipitous drop going to his head, clearing the red haze from his vision, leaving him dizzy and disoriented, _empty_.

It’s very quiet.

Eggsy stares at Markova. Her face is red, her eyes are bloodshot. Her hands are desperately trying to pry off Eggsy’s fingers that are still squeezing around her throat.

He drops her and throws himself back with a disgusted cry, trips over another body and falls right onto the blood slicked floor.

All around him is nothing but bodies and bullet-ridden walls. His suit is dotted with mashed bullet casings. One had nicked him across the temple and left a curtain of crimson running down his face, unintelligible from the rest of the blood splattered across his skin.

“Eggsy.”

Roxy slowly stands from where she had ducked behind the table holding the device, her hand still hovered over it. Her appearance is grotesque. Half her face is coated in blood, entrails matting her hair. She looks at him like she’s never seen him before.

She looks at him like he’s a monster.

His hand is at his watch before he can even reconsider, twisting the dial, and shooting an amnesia-inducing dart into Roxy’s neck. The last look to cross her face is one of betrayal before her eyes roll up into her head and she collapses.

A sob escapes. He's belatedly shocked to realise it's come from him.

It swiftly transforms into a growl when a cool hand touches his shoulder. He turns, ready to strike out, teeth bared.

Markova meets his eyes solemnly. “I know what you are.” Her voice is hoarse, roughly squeezed out through her crushed larynx.

“I didn’t...this wasn’t supposed to happen…” Eggsy shakes his head, imploring her, “This wasn’t supposed to….”

“I know. I know.” She kneels down beside him, encases his trembling bloody hands within hers. There’s harsh ring of red around her neck, bruised skin and more blood. It’s already starting to swell. Her eyes are like two still ponds, calming. “But they won’t stop hunting you down now, the people you work for.”

With dawning horror, he realises she’s right. They saw everything. His glasses.

Eggsy looks around for them. They’re no longer on his face. They must have been knocked off in the melee. It didn’t matter. Roxy still had hers on. Even if she won’t remember, it’s all been streamed live back to Kingsman, recorded forever, witnessed by Merlin, by _Harry_.

He’s going to be executed for this. They’ll drag him out back and put him down like a rabid dog.

“I have to go...I have to go,” he whispers, trying to push her away. “I have to….”

He stills when Markova tightens her grip on his hands. “Let me help you. I know of a place you can go where you’ll be safe.”

He slaughtered almost everyone around her. There are piles of bodies between them and the stairs. He almost killed her twice. “Why would you help me?”

She smiles at him, though it tapers off into a pained wince as she lightly touches her abused throat. “You’re not the first of your kind whose mistakes I’ve had to suffer.”


	6. Chapter 6

Romania in the first whispers of spring still isn’t a place where Merlin particularly enjoys being, and certainly not out among the thick of its woods, far from any semblance of civilisation but very close to other less benign elements. The air is sharp with bitter cold. The ground is treacherously slippery with wet mud almost up to his knee, making it difficult to slog through. The trees are still stark and bare, creating spindly silhouettes through the heavy mist that draws visibility to mere metres.

He refuses to let the disconcerting environment get to him, it’s just mist and trees after all, but he cannot deny that even his eminent rationality cannot escape the evolutionary fight or flight response now curling along the back of his neck. It doesn't help either that he has knowingly gone out in hopes of coming across something very dangerous, certainly the most dangerous thing he’s encountered in decades, excepting his best friend.

His clumsy grasp of Romanian and many frustrating interactions with wary and mistrustful locals had finally led him to these forests where many a poor villager or unfortunate traveller had disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. Locals spoke of a night-dwelling beast who roamed here, plucking unsuspecting humans from the road or nearby homes, and when no humans were to be found foolishly wandering outdoors or in less than fortified houses, then it was cattle or even domestic pets. There used to be abundant herds of deer. Not anymore.

It is hard to tell, but the sun should be setting now, and even though no sun could pierce the thick cloud cover that currently smothered the skies, a feral creature who may have lost its higher faculties would at least understand how painful the sun was on their skin and would have long since settled into a nocturnal schedule, sleeping or whatever it was these creatures did through the hours of daylight. After a long winter that did much to discourage most animals from emerging from their thickets and burrows, he imagines one predator in particular to be especially ravenous.

So there is another reason for Merlin’s sense of unease: he can sense when he’s being hunted.

It’s not as if he can hear anything, not the sounds of footsteps or of brittle twigs being snapped or the rustle of dead leaves. He hasn’t been equipped with a superior sense of smell to scent out one’s enemy nor particularly acute eyesight to pick up on any unusual shifts of movement from the corners of his eye. It’s just a feeling as old as the dawn of man, a cold tendril of nausea running through his gut like a sword and a prickling of his skin, making the fine hairs on his arms stand on end. His status as apex predator feels largely questionable at the moment.

When the attack comes, he barely hears the displacement of air, nor the thump of a heavy mass pounding across the wet earth. He just feels the rapid approach of danger. Hears the barest snarl in his ear and sing of teeth through the air.

But, what the creature doesn’t know is that Merlin has decades of experience of being in the virtual shoes of agents under the most harrowing of circumstances. He doesn’t flinch when danger is hurtling in his direction, nor does he let his innate fear get the better of him, even when his heart is ready to burst within his chest.

He turns, raises his gun, and fires.

 

_____

 

“Attempting to re-establish contact with Lancelot.”

Merlin’s voice is calm because he is looked to as a pillar of cool restraint, the epitome of grace under fire, but it’s a trait which, unfortunately, isn’t contagious. The tension in the room is as smothering and pervasive as humidity; it’s so quiet that all the otherwise filtered out sounds of life within Kingsman’s handler division start to grate on Harry’s senses: the fluorescent lights humming overhead, the clacking of fingers on keyboards, messy slurps of tepid tea, a technician anxiously clicking a pen until his nearby colleague tells him to stop before she shoves it up his—

“Placing the call,” Merlin announces.

There’s a click as the sound is pushed out through the speakers, and then the faintest crackling of white noise. On the large overhead monitors remains the view they’ve been watching for the last half hour in deafening silence: a skewed perspective of a blood-drenched hand and a sliver of tailored black sleeve that would indicate it belonged to a Russian military officer. Not altogether the most disturbing image either of them has ever witnessed, but neither the hand nor the glasses through which they are seeing have moved since.

“Lancelot, do you copy?” Merlin asks, pausing for two beats before repeating the question. His pulse has picked up, though it’s hardly approached levels that could be called _racing_. There’s a hint of increased perspiration across his skin.

For once, Merlin is not sat at his god-like station. He’d sprung up from his chair the moment things unexpectedly went to shit, and though he’s never been one to pace or exhibit any overtly aggressive signs of restlessness, his body remains a taut line of bridled agitation.

Harry remains silent, tuning his focus to the dull roar of air ghosting out from the speakers and the static image on the largest screen, willing for signs of life to manifest.

And then, at last:

 _I’m here_.

Lancelot’s words emerge as a slurry drawl, still heavily impacted by the drugs in her system. The view on the screen trembles and swoops up to an awning overhead, and above that, a bullet grey sky. _I’m not sure...not sure what happened_.

She rolls into a sitting position, affording them a startling panorama of the various ripped apart bodies layering the mezzanine. _Oh God…._ comes the unbidden utterance followed by a sharp inhalation.

“Lancelot, you were hit with a Kingsman-issued amnesia dart, which has erased your memories of at least the last two hours,” Merlin says matter-of-factly as Lancelot holds up the tiny Kingsman dart she must have retrieved from her neck. “But I need you to confirm the package is still on site and then I need you to secure it. Quickly, now.”

Reliably capable agent that she is, Lancelot doesn’t question her orders despite, Harry is certain, the immense confusion she must be feeling. She simply follows through to the utmost of her ability, scanning her immediate surroundings and pausing when the device in question still remains sitting on its table of honour.

_Package sighting confirmed._

And, moments later when they watch her small hands quickly bag the device in a hastily claimed and emptied out leather case that somehow escaped the bloodbath to remain relatively spotless:

 _Package secured_.

Merlin’s spine eases from its severe angle by a few degrees. At least something has gone right on this whole thrice-damned mission.

“Well done. Get to the safehouse immediately and keep a low profile.”

 _Wait_. The view on the screen suddenly whips about with franticly abrupt jerks. _Where’s Galahad? He was supposed to be on this mission. Where is he? Is he…?_

“Galahad is currently AWOL. Proceed to the safehouse and await further instructions. Your priority is safeguarding the package.”

Harry can’t imagine what must be going through her mind, having to wake up to a massacre without knowing how it happened, being asked to do something while lacking the context for it, wondering where her best friend was and fervently hoping he wasn't one of those broken, bloody bodies she was trying not to trip over.

 _There had better be a good explanation for this_ , she says with an edge of warning to her tone. It’s the first show of pushback Lancelot’s ever demonstrated, at least as far as Harry has witnessed.

Merlin too, if his raised brows are anything by which to judge. “You’ll have time to review the footage later, but for now, you need to get out of there before reinforcements arrive.”

_Copy that, Merlin. Going radio silent unless I require assistance._

“Anna,” Merlin says after switching channels.

_Yes, Merlin?_

“Monitor Lancelot’s progress and let me know if she runs into trouble.”

 _Yes, sir_.

Situation successfully triaged, Merlin swivels in his chair and peels off his glasses to rub his eyes. Harry notes how the tips of his fingers pinch in at his temples in an attempt to assuage the first stirrings of a headache.

With a moment of pause to simply breathe, the weight of the last hour sinks down upon them. Harry wonders if that was how he had looked in Kentucky, cutting through people like wet paper with mindless fury and alien savagery. Had he frightened Merlin with it? Eggsy? Is that what creatures like him look like to human beings, even jaded, weary secret agents?

The dread gathers in his throat, cloying. It takes him a few attempts to speak. “We both know this wasn’t his fault, Merlin.”

Merlin remains silent.

“It was that damn signal. He could hear it when the others couldn’t. It made him...it _made_ him….”

“It made him realise one of my greatest fears.” Merlin finally looks up and meets his eyes, grim. “Again.”

Harry can’t hold his gaze any longer. If he closes his eyes, he can still remember what it’s like to snap bones likes dry twigs, to end all those lives with the guiltless relish of a child cruelly stomping on ants. He had wanted to, at the time. He had _loved_ it. But the worst part, the very worst part, was that Valentine’s signal hadn’t turned him into a monster against his will. It had only drawn back the curtains to what was already there.

“What will you do now?” he hears himself ask.

Merlin shoves his glasses back on his face and stands up. Concerned, Harry follows him as he makes his way through the corridors and deeper into the R&D department with a swift, determined stride. To anyone else, the situation from the outside seemed almost normal, Arthur and Merlin walking somewhere together, the expression on their faces deterring anyone from even considering approaching.

Where they end up is Merlin’s lab, the one that’s officially in Kingsman’s blueprints. Almost everything within it, of course, is locked down and coded to Merlin’s handprint, which he submits to open a tall grey cabinet.

Harry watches him retrieve a black case and set it down on the table in the centre of the room. Another scan and a keyed in code to open it and turn it towards Harry.

Within the case is a pistol, clearly of Kingsman origin though it hasn’t been modified for shotgun cartridges. Upon closer inspection, there’s something different about this one. The barrel is longer and thinner, and there isn’t a hammer. Next to the gun are what Harry had first assumed to be magazines, but those, too, are not what they initially appeared to be. It’s almost as if they were made of _glass_.

“What is this?” he asks, one pale hand hovering over the gun, but hesitant to actually make contact as if it were a trap.

“A weapon specifically designed for use against beings like you,” Merlin says. “It emits concentrated rays of UV light.”

“You...created a laser gun.” A bitter chuckle slips past his lips.

“Every sci-fi nerd's fantasy,” Merlin says with a bittersweet smile. “Though I had hoped the circumstances would be different.”

At last, Harry picks up the weapon. It’s extremely lightweight, almost like a toy in his hands. A little application of his own supernatural strength and he could shatter it to pieces in his fist. He wants to. Every instinct within him is screaming in alarm to destroy the thing that could hurt him.

“I won’t allow you to kill him,” he finds himself saying again instead, looking up from the gun to level a steady look at Merlin. It's practically become a mantra. “This wasn’t his fault.”

“Maybe not this time, but it doesn’t change the fact that it happened. And it wasn’t the boy’s first incident either.” Merlin arches a brow as if in challenge, holding it for a moment before his whole body seems to deflate. “Regardless of what he may or may not deserve, our first goal right now is to bring him in, Harry, you know that. He’s a danger to himself and others right now, even if he doesn’t intend to be.”

“He’s out there alone right now, utterly terrified of retribution, and you propose sending agents after him with weapons that can harm him?” Harry asks with a hint of incredulity.

“I am not going to send our agents out there without the means to protect themselves should Eggsy be...resistant.”

“He would _never_ harm his own—”

“Just like he would never slaughter Russia’s top military officers and heads of state? Or the hapless civilians who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with them?” Merlin supposes, jaw settling into a hard line. “We have to prepare for any possibility. Eggsy causing massive amounts of damage and destruction even if he thinks he won’t is still a possibility.”

Harry replaces the gun back in its case. “Tell me, Merlin, would you shoot me with this gun if you had to?”

“If I had to, but certainly not because I would ever want to,” Merlin says before sighing, a defeated sound. “Believe me when I say I don’t want to kill Eggsy either, not if I can help it.”

He scrapes a sharp incisor against the inside of his lip, drawing blood, bright and copper on his tongue, and sucking on the open wound before it heals all too soon. “And can you?” Off Merlin’s questioning look, “Help it, I mean?” When Merlin continues to give him a blank look, “Oh come off it. You didn’t just stop at weapons that would give us a few third-degree burns. You told me once that you found the means to permanently kill us. That can’t be this, Merlin.”

“You’re not wrong. The guns were designed to primarily incapacitate.” Merlin turns back to the same cabinet and retrieves a smaller black case that has been similarly locked down with redundant security protocols. This one, however, reveals a relatively ordinary tranquiliser gun.

The more concerning items must then be, Harry surmises with a feeling of slowly-mounting foreboding, the three small vials filled with a chartreuse liquid beside it.

Merlin picks up one of the vials and holds it up. The mixture is translucent enough to view the world through it in a warped and sickly yellow-green haze. “It’s the serum contained in these that’s designed to permanently kill.”

 

_____

 

Up close, this creature reminds Merlin of, oddly enough, Roxy. Obviously not in looks or overall demeanour, although the creature itself is smaller and more slender than an average adult human male, which leads Merlin to believe it had been, at one time, female.

As it is, under the lights of the old, abandoned facility wing he’d managed to jumpstart into working order with the judicious application of a generator, the creature is more beast than anything human now. It is fearfully skeletal from its hunger, bones clearly outlined through its chalk-like skin, which had become so pale as to be translucent, ghostly blue veins running beneath it like lines of marble. The ends of its hair are now a tangled grey mass sprouting from its head, slowing turning white at the root where once, Merlin thinks, it may have been dark brown.

But there is a very stubborn and almost noble gleam in its dark iris-less eyes, one that says had it not been chained up and its limbs tethered, Merlin would be quickly drained and summarily discarded. He respects that sort of impersonal efficiency. It’s the exact sort of way, clean and quick, he’d want his life to end.

A low and continuous snarling rises up from its throat when it senses Merlin is near, nostrils flaring, teeth sharp and white. Its chains rattle and creak with how hard it strains to reach for him.

Merlin snips off the corner of a heated bag of human blood and places it just within its reach.

He doesn’t think the creature necessarily is aware of what the thing he’d just placed before it is, but it smells like hot sustenance and that must good enough for it to grab and sink its teeth into the bag, drinking gluttonously, though ending up pouring more blood down the outside of its body than inside it.

He repeats this with several more bags, one after another, until the creature and the spreading crimson pool around it come to resemble some gruesome horror film. But then, Merlin reflects, hadn’t his whole life become a parody of one ever since he learned that monsters were real?

The creature could probably continue to down bag after bag all day, he knows, never able to reach any true point of utter satiety, but when Merlin eventually cuts it off, it no longer rages at him and seems almost...content. Its belly is somewhat full, slavishly licking at the blood on the floor and on its own hands, unaware that its own movements are growing increasingly sluggish as the sedative starts to take effect.

Merlin tries to imagine Harry reaching this point of desperate mindlessness, and the image leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

It’s this thought alone that gives him the impetus to go through with what he needs to do.

 

_____

 

Evening draws down a thick cloak of darkness across Kingsman’s grounds, though the organisation has ever done its part in beating it back through the most tasteful means possible: a generous smattering of elegant soft lights outline every walking path and steadily illuminate any entrance and exit, obscure enough to mask their more aggressive defence measures (the always-on cameras, the motion detectors, the alarms that would signal should anything go amiss), to say nothing of the offencive ones.

Arthur’s office is lit warmly with incandescent lamps set to their lowest setting, fortified by a healthy crackling blaze going in the fireplace that pours out a thick, sleepy heat over the room and makes up for how draught-ridden the windows still are. It’s the only source of light in the room now, warming up the rich wooden furnishings, glinting out the glass panes of Merlin’s glasses, and dancing merrily in the reflection of his tumbler of scotch. There aren’t many physical trappings Harry necessarily misses about human existence, but alcohol is one of them. He liked being able to dull his mind and blunt his senses. He wishes he could do so now.

“When I told you I needed to go away after Kentucky,” Merlin begins, drawing Harry’s sharp focus upon him. Merlin doesn’t meet his eyes, choosing instead to focus on the amber liquid sloshing in his glass every time he turns it with his fingers. “It was the truth. I _was_ following up on a lead I finally had after years of research.”

The _incident_. That’s what they’ve taken to calling the event that made Harry into what he is today. It sounded as benign as spilling a bit of tea on the tablecloth.

“You remember how many years afterwards it took to track down every last member of the organisation affiliated with that facility,” Merlin says.

Harry does. Had personally seen to several of them to show them the fruits of their labours.

“It stood to reason that whatever experiments they had been working on before you hadn’t necessarily stopped thereafter.”

Unbidden, a cold curl of foreboding curls up his spine. Harry is quick enough to put together the pieces. “You found another one like me.”

“Not like you, specifically,” Merlin clarified. “But rather more like the creature responsible for what you became. What, I imagine, you could be if driven to it.”

Transparently monstrous, those things were, barely even resembling humans any longer. It had been, Harry now knew, driven mad with hunger, entirely feral. He had almost become that. _Had_ started to, even, and had stopped only after it had been too late.

“So you found a way to stop us permanently.”

“Not at first, no.” At Harry’s scepticism, Merlin tips his head in acknowledgement. Bold to say, given all that had transpired between them. “It must have escaped the lab and spent several years terrorising the countryside, becoming something of a dreaded creature of local myth that slowly spread from village to village. Don’t go out at night where monsters lurk and such. It took a long time for the stories to make their way to me, even longer still to corroborate them, but when it all seemed very much legitimate....I went out there and to see for myself. I needed a live test subject.”

“For?”

“For finding a cure.”

Harry blinks and sits back. Merlin suddenly looks defeated and small all at once. “Oh, Merlin. I thought we had given up on that possibility years ago.”

“As long as I’m still capable, you know I won’t, especially when the stakes are only getting higher that you’d do something we’d all regret,” Merlin says sadly. “The irony being that I had achieved what I set out to do. I found a serum that successfully killed every last mutated blood cell in the host body.” He grimaced. “So successful, it also killed the subject entirely. Like chemo on steroids.”

“You set out to find a cure and ended up creating the nuclear option,” Harry says softly.

“Indeed.” Merlin sighs and takes a hearty swallow of his scotch. “Promising applications for a vaccine, though. Normal blood cells are left unaffected.”

“I just don’t have a normal healthy human cell left in my body,” Harry concludes. Neither did Eggsy.

“I was about to return home when that bloody unexpected snowstorm trapped me in the countryside for much longer than I intended. Suppose there really was something to impending climate change worries Valentine had,” Merlin says, words heavily infused with regret and apology still.

“Yet you didn’t destroy what you created when you learned what it did,” Harry says, unable to keep the accusation from his tone.

“If you were in my place, you would have done the same.” For all his guilt over what had happened to Eggsy, Merlin is not at all apologetic now. “We hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. And then, of course, you made me promise to let you die. If anything, I couldn’t return empty handed, knowing I could at least make the end quicker and more certain. I keep my promises, Harry. If you still wished for death, I would have let you have it.”

 

_____

 

A few promising weeks in, Merlin has begun to notice the creature has started to become less feral and more...he has a difficult time trying find the right word for it, because all that comes to mind is _conscious_.

Maybe it’s the steady diet of blood the creature now gets that has started to repair whatever damaged neural pathways starvation had previously caused, or maybe the experimental substances Merlin is injecting into it are now inadvertently returning to it a spirit of humanity if perhaps still not a physical one.

But it’s unnerving to sense that light of human intelligence now lurking behind its eyes, not after all he’s done.

Once when the guilt feels especially clawing, he’s crouches down next to it and looks it in the eye. “Vă amintiți?”

The creature just stares back at him, unblinking. With a more filled out frame, it appears more human than ever. Merlin doesn’t know what it’s thinking, if it even is, but he could swear it understands him.

It still doesn’t speak, whether it’s out of sheer defiance or because it is no longer physically capable of doing so, he doesn’t know.

“Imi pare rau,” he tells it anyway, because he knows he can’t stop what he’s doing now.

 

_____

 

Several days later when it’s getting on well into the night, edging more towards the dawn of a new day, Harry is still held up in his office. He cannot bear to go home, as if leaving the estate would mean entirely cutting ties with the possibility of ever finding Eggsy again or that he no longer believes Eggsy is worth bringing back in safe and whole and not simply executing him on sight. Despite understanding where Merlin is coming from, he’s not comforted by Merlin’s proclaimed good intentions. He knows very well how intentions can go awry. Just as he knows creating something, even if only as a preventative measure, means one has already talked one’s self into the possibility of having to use it.

He won’t admit that it’s a fear he still has, that if he weren’t there to personally monitor this end of Kingsman’s activities, someone would give the go-ahead to do just that.

As it is, Eggsy’s left them in over their heads with frantic cleanup efforts. They’ve (because he refuses to lay the blame entirely at Eggsy’s feet, they should have predicted that his acute hearing would have honed in on a signal that couldn’t have been picked up by average human ears) just singlehandedly destroyed what stability the Russian government had in the aftermath of V-Day, and now that they’ve at least successfully rid the world of the last traces of Valentine’s tech, they’ve got to hastily make sure no one can trace it back to them. It means smuggling Lancelot and the device out of Russia unseen (on a freight train bringing diesel fuel to Kazakhstan) while scrambling to erase data and footage in a very clumsy and suspicious fashion, but it is better than nothing.

And then there’s the fact that Eggsy is out there, alone and surely afraid. Harry can’t help remembering the sheer terror on his face after having killed those FSB agents. How Eggsy had to be even more understandably fearful this time around. The thought of it feels like an open wound, raw and stinging, nearly consuming his thoughts. Harry’s hands curl into fists at his side in helplessness. He’s failed Eggsy yet again.

He watches Lancelot’s recording of the incident. Then Eggsy’s, before his own glasses were knocked off his face and left face down on the ground. Then Lancelot’s, again and again. He’d seen recordings of his own behaviour in the South Glade church, moving through the crowd like a wolf in a suit, a creature of violence and blood buttoned up in genteel refinery. There’s a terrible kind of beauty in it.

Ever since he first killed the boy, he’d always been so very aware of Eggsy’s physical proximity, like he could sense his own blood flowing within Eggsy’s veins. There is a very possessive quality to it, the pride and ownership of a creator over his creation, but also one of inexplicable intimacy. It makes touching him a soothing act to both Eggsy and himself. It makes drinking from him and fucking him feel like being made whole again. Now every fibre of his being seems attuned to this loss, like he is being pulled to where ever Eggsy is now in an always ongoing journey to be reunited, blood of his blood.

Could it be…? Is this connection he has to Eggsy something he could use now?

On the tablet, Eggsy is snapping a soldier’s neck while using a pilfered knife to sink deep into the heart of another, a strangely flat look of rage petrified across his blood-splattered face. Then he seems to zero in on someone in particular, all concentrated fury and hatred brought to bear: Markova. Rushing at her almost too fast to see on camera, hands coming round her neck, squeezing, lifting her clear off the ground before the view turns to Roxy’s hands desperately turning off the device.

On that last unbearable image, he closes his eyes and tries to stretch out along the connection he’s always felt to Eggsy, made near physical by what they are now. It feels like travelling precariously along a tightrope that stretched ever onwards towards the horizon, a destination Harry cannot see.

He pulls back in on himself and blinks open his eyes, disoriented. It’s been a long time under. Almost half an hour. The screen before him now depicts the view from when Lancelot had been rendered unconscious by Eggsy’s dart, head craned to perfectly frame the image of an officer’s death-stiffened hand. He waits until Lancelot finally comes to, had never noticed the quick, panicky pants beneath her breath the first time around, and watches as she takes in the horror around her, bodies of officers and soldiers in their dull black and olive green uniforms and—

Harry pauses the recording. Rewinds it to the point where Lancelot gingerly sits up and looks around. Stops it again. Rewinds. Frowns.

Among all the drab military colours, Markova had been a vision of rich colour. With her light hair, her body ought to have been easy to pick out, even in the quick sweep Lancelot had made. He watches it all again, it’s quick, but….

“Anna,” Harry says after touching his Kingsman glasses to activate the comms.

_Yes, Arthur?_

“When can we get a list of confirmed dead from the prison?”

_Sagramour’s working on it as we speak, sir. One silver lining here is that with all the pandemonium going on, it should be in shortly._

“Yes, I imagine there are more pressing concerns at the moment. Send it immediately to me when it does.”

 _Yes, sir_.

He’ll bet very good money that Markova’s name won’t be on it, but even though he’s impatient and chomping at the bit, the delicacy of the situation means he has to be certain beyond a doubt.

But still, he knows it, feels it to be true. They had only been able to witness Eggsy’s attempt, not the completion of the act. He’s been over the footage enough times to see no evidence of it either.

Markova isn’t dead. Moreover, she’s helping Eggsy.

And for the life of him, after all he’d done to her, Harry can’t understand why.

 

_____

 

Somewhere in the fight, his glasses had stopped working, possibly because they had taken too many hits. Though Kingsman technology had always been decades ahead of the mainstream markets, the simple fact is that back then, the technology just wasn’t as reliable.

His glasses had stopped working, and something within him feels closer to the surface, fuelled by his rage at seeing so many victims, mostly women and children, in filthy cages or chained to the walls in the basement. The worst are the ones tied to the beds in the slavers’ own rooms, dazed and too skinny, their arms smattered with track marks.

He’d run out of ammo several rooms ago and hasn’t bothered to retrieve another gun from any of the bodies he leaves in his wake. His hands are good enough, his teeth. He doesn’t even know or particularly care who he’s frightening in the process, letting his true self take over to tear, to rend, to slaughter until all that’s left is the the largest bedroom at the end of the hall, flanked by two guards who go down as easily as all the others.

Harry uses their bodies as battering rams to force the door off its hinges.

There he is, the leader of the whole trafficking ring, falling from his bed in surprise, sheets tangled around his legs. He’s large and balding, tattooed and dirty. He screams at Harry and scrambles to retrieve his gun.

Harry crosses the room in three strides, picks the man up as if he weighed nothing more than a piece of paper, and snaps his neck, letting the body drop at his feet, already regretting he had done it so quickly. The blood is still hot in his veins, the animal fury, his own monstrous self wanting, _needing_ more, thirsty.

A sound from the closet draws his attention. He rips open the doors and she lunges at him, screaming, a small knife plunging deep into his shoulder.

He growls in anger, in pain, and snaps forward, teeth to her neck, rending. The blood flows over his tongue, rich and sweet.

Until he pulls back and becomes horribly aware that the person in his arms is small, female, and terrified. She is in his arms, throat torn open, so young, naked and frail, looking up into his eyes in terror glazed with pain, dying.

“No. Oh god, no.”

He secures his tie tightly around her throat and wraps her up in the sheets that smell like sex. He lays her across the backseat of a dead slavers’ truck and keeps the gas pedal to the floor to take her to the closest hospital, practically throwing her into the nearest doctor’s arms before disappearing into the night, shaken to the core over what he’s done.

She lives.

 

_____

 

For all that it is easier than it’s ever been to extract information out of Russia in the wake of its leaders being wiped out in one fell swoop again, it’s significantly more arduous to get in. Perhaps rightfully fearing an overthrow or a descent into anarchy, Russia has banned all commercial transport into and out of the country and declared its borders to be temporarily closed while a military curfew is put into effect for all its cities and towns.

But Russia’s borders are vast and a significant percentage of them run through terrains and climes that are rather hostile to humans. For one who is more determined and perhaps a bit less human than most, infiltrating Russia takes a bit longer than it might have done, but is hardly impossible.

Harry makes it to Moscow in four days’ time, traveling by night and keeping well sheltered during the day. With every step closer to the city, he feels it now that he knows what to look for: _Eggsy_. His presence grows stronger in Harry’s mind, like the beam from a lighthouse cutting through the darkness to show him the way home. If Harry concentrates, he can physically follow it like a string through the labyrinth.

Where it draws him to is a fairly middle class neighbourhood on the eastern outskirts of the city, a setting that bears a much lower profile than the glamour of Moscow’s wealthy elite but is hardly disreputable in and of itself. Harry doesn’t think Markova could ever stand to lower herself to such depths, even for a secret pied-à-terre.

Of course, her ideas of obscure and out of the way rather differ from others’. The house before him is large and far nicer than any other on the block. Though its style had been built in the same post-Soviet architecture as the other homes, it carried a gleaming pristineness that practically screamed new construction.

Despite the way the connection he has come to trust is now blaring at full volume that Eggsy is close, the house is dark. He can’t hear the heartbeat of anyone at all within its rooms, just the low hum of appliances at work. By all appearances, the home isn’t gated nor seemingly secured in the manner Markova usually prefers, but Harry can hear the hum of power running under and all through the property. There had to be heavy monitoring in place, and Harry wouldn’t put it past Markova to have installed a few painful deterrents for unwelcome guests.

Human measures that are adequate against other humans, but not for the likes of him. He scales the side of the home, dismantles the lines powering the alarms, and slips through a first-story window and into a guest bedroom, judging from the impersonality of it. It’s still decorated lavishly, though, expensive furnishings that are showy but stop at being just shy of ostentatious.

Eggsy is close, so close. He can _sense_ it, but every door he opens reveals only more empty, disused rooms.

It’s only after he’s canvassed every empty bedroom and made his way down to the ground floor that he realises his error.

No one is home. At least, no one with a heartbeat.

“Hello, Harry.”

She’s nearly hidden among the curtains of the corner window of the study, so quiet and scentless, he hadn’t even sensed her presence until she announced herself. Now that he sees her, wraps all his senses around her in full, he freezes, unable to comprehend the truth of it.

She’s always been pale, but now she is impossibly so, white as the moon. While she’s always held herself with an enviable poise, she is preternaturally still now, indistinguishable from the lifeless objects that surround her.

And then he realises that everything he sensed about Eggsy came from _her_ , that it’s Eggsy’s blood, his own blood, that courses through her veins now, calling to him. Blood he assumed would only ever be shared between Eggsy and himself.

The betrayal leaves him reeling. For a few precious moments, he doesn’t know what to do, where or how to stand, what to say, how to _be_.

She turns from the window and walks towards him, pale grace now made exaggeratedly so as to be uncanny, a faint smile on her lips that somehow is not smug even though this whole show has to have been done all for him, like she’s genuinely proud of her accomplishment and wants him to be as well.

Finally, he manages to squeeze out a breath. “Why?”

Her smile dissolves into a frown as if she senses his displeasure and is genuinely confused by it. “Because all my life I’ve had to live at the mercies of men, walking a fine line of appeasement out of fear. Now they no longer have any power over me. Now, no one does.”

 

_____

 

He keeps to the shadows for a little while longer, watching her beat a punching bag with the unceasing drive of one who has something to prove. She’s taken up firearms, knives, and has been rigourously training in several forms of martial arts. She practises every day until she could probably fight off an attacker in her sleep. Not that she sleeps much anymore. There are shadows in her eyes.

“The scars are healing nicely,” he says before stepping out into the light.

She doesn’t startle, doesn’t even stop from her routine for several minutes longer, ignoring him. He accepts it as his due and waits for her to finally finish, dropping her arms and heading for the bench that contains her towel and water bottle.

When she’s wiped down her face and taken several sips of water, she finally addresses him. “Father can’t bear to see his daughter marred by such ugly scars. Money buys the best plastic surgeons.”

Subconsciously, she tips her head up, drawing his attention to the smooth skin of her throat. There’s only the faintest of pink lines there now, and in time, even those would fade. He knows she doesn’t want to hear it, but he can’t help saying it again anyway. “I’m sorry. I’ll always be sorry.”

She eyes him, but doesn’t seem particularly affected one way or another by his words. She’s heard them often enough by now. The first few times, she had screamed at him in venomous fury. Now she just rolls her eyes more often than not.

Today, though, earns him a different reaction altogether. “Do you know what you can do to make amends?”

“Tell me.” He both dreads and is eager to hear it.

“Make me like you,” she says, not flinching nor backing down when he doesn’t do anything but stare at her blankly.

“I–I can’t.”

“Why not?”

He opens and closes his mouth, fumbling for words that usually come much more easily to him. “What I am...it’s not possible. I’m the only one I know of who’s...like this. Everyone and everything involved in my creation is now gone. Besides, you wouldn’t want this anyway, believe me.”

She clenches her jaw in disappointment and turns away, busying herself with packing up her gym bag.

“Why?” he finally asks just as she’s walking towards the doors.

She pauses, but doesn’t turn around. The line of her back is straight, shoulders set back, proud. She’s learned to bury her fear and smother it with defiance instead. “I’m tired of feeling like prey among all these wolves.”

 

_____

 

“You lied to me, Harry. You said you were the only one like you. That it wasn’t possible to share your gift, remember?” There’s a hint of reproach in her even tone, a flash of steel in her eyes. “But after I saw how Eggsy had been changed from the first time we met, I knew it was because you didn’t want to.”

“You know my name.” It’s the only thing his reeling mind can firmly grasp onto.

“Yes. He told me all about you. Sharing blood invites all sorts of intimacies, I suppose.” She doesn’t say it like it’s an insinuation, but he finds himself wanting to claw her beautiful face off anyway.

“ _Stop speaking_.” There’s a low snarl reverberating through the air. It’s coming from him. He’s promised Eggsy he’d never use his will to compel again, but he uses it now without shame or compunction, because it’s all wrong now, all of it.

Only, for how much he wills it to be so, it seems his influence does not extend to the second generation. She shakes her head, almost tutting him. “So now all I can ask is: why? Why did you deny me?”

“Because I told the truth as I knew it to be at the time,” Harry finally says, blowing the words out in a breath of frustration and guilt. “I didn’t know how to make another like myself back then. How Eggsy came to be was...was an accident born out of desperation and madness and dumb luck.”

“What rubbish, Harry. We’ve all consumed enough books and films to get the gist of it. So what it really came down to was the fact you’d share your powers with some boy who neither wanted nor needed them and not the girl you almost killed, who asked you to help her, who’s gone out of the way to help you time and time again at great risk and cost to herself!”

“Because I would never wish this sort of life on anyone!” he shouts at her, launching himself into a restless pace across the floor. “You least of all. I regret every day what I did to Eggsy. Like you, I’ve hurt him, only I seem to be doing it over and over, and he keeps letting me. Trust me, Rozalina, this life will not be one you want.”

“Spoken like a man who is used to having everything.” This time, a sneer curdles her features, the first glimmer of genuine loathing surfacing in her gaze.

What a very good actor she’s had to be all these years, careful to hide such feelings from others, to be congenial, kind, and docile.

“Please,” he finds himself begging. “Just tell me where he is.”

“Unfortunately, I am a woman of my word.” Markova turns and moves behind her desk, a great hulking wooden thing that takes up most of the righthand side of the room. “I promised Eggsy I’d keep him safe from the ones hunting him down.”

“We are _not_ hunting him down.”

She looks up, arching one sceptical brow. “Aren’t you?”

He refuses to react. “We only wish to keep him safe.” A pointed glare. “Especially from those who would exploit him.”

“I don’t believe you,” Markova says. “You’re a liar, Harry. All you’ve ever said and done for me was a lie.”

This time, he can’t help but flinch for the truth of it, sharp and precisely landed, just when he’s already been worn thin by the conflation of his greatest failures. “Please tell me where he is, Rozalina. I won’t tell anyone about you. You’ll be left alone with what you’ve wanted. I just want to find him and keep him safe, that’s all.”

Her eyes fall to half mast. He can see how she considering his words. “You’ve gone off book. Not even Kingsman knows you’re here, do they?”

“No.” This time, he bows his head, allowing himself to feel the full brunt of his shame and guilt. “They know what I am, but they never knew what happened between us, else I suspect my career would have ended a lot sooner than it had.”

Merlin had been so infuriated after Morocco, and Harry had known he was walking on very thin ice afterwards, but the true depths of his actions then hadn’t really sunk in. After all, he had only drained the lives of men the world was better off without. As far as he’d been concerned, he had done a good thing. But there had been no excuse for what he’d done to that young, already traumatised girl Markova had been. That had been pure, unrestrained savagery that had almost led to him brutally taking the life of an innocent.

After that, there had been no more slip-ups. Not until Kentucky.

“And once you figured out my involvement, you hoped to still keep it under wraps. All your shame.” She smiles mirthlessly, her wide mouth stretching across her face in a grimace. “Well, Harry, I think you really shouldn’t have to live with your guilt any longer.”

Her hand moves, and the moonlight pouring in through the windows glints off the metal of the gun she is holding. At first, Harry doesn’t understand, wants to tell her what little damage such weapons would do to him, and then she squeezes the trigger.

There’s a bright flare of light that hurts his eyes and then he feels the searing agony of something fiery tearing into his gut. It sends him stumbling backwards and falling into a chair, clutching at the hot wound, looking down and seeing the charred insides of his abdomen, the edges of his skin red and cauterised.

UV gun. He’d have to inform Merlin that his ideas weren’t so original after all, he thinks hysterically.

“Like it? I worked on this design for years after I returned home from the hospital. In my quest to know everything about you, I noticed how you always avoided the sun if you could help it.” She stands up from her desk and approaches him, stopping only when the muzzle of the gun touched his temple. “Let’s see if we can make death stick this time.”

“You’ve always been such a clever girl,” he says through his clenched teeth, trying to bite back the pulses of pain emanating from his wound, as unceasing as an oil well that had been set on fire. “You really should have figured out that if Eggsy’s your maker, and I am his, I will always be stronger and faster than you.”

He shoves the gun away from his head just as she squeezes the trigger a second time, sending a bolt of UV light through the rug instead of his skull, and squeezes her wrist, wrenching it back.

She cries out and sends a first into his face, causing him to loosen his grip, but not before shoving her back with enough force to send her crashing into her desk, sending the whole thing sliding across the floor and smashing into the wall.

As she brings the gun back to him again, he’s up, ignoring the way his gut wound protests the movement, and throwing himself at her, toppling them both to the floor and sending the gun skittering away.

Their eyes meet, and Markova’s mouth opens to reveal her pointed teeth before she drives her knee into his injury and kicks him across the room with only the opposite wall and its tall bookshelves of heavy tomes to stop his trajectory. The furniture, sturdy as it is, can’t withstand the force of his impact, however, and the shelves snap and splinter, sending the books crashing down upon him.

He’s never had any real opponents for a long time, not in hand-to-hand combat. Not against any human. But Markova has dedicated most of her life to self-defence training and now has the supernatural strength, speed, and reflexes to match. On top of it all, he’s injured, rather seriously, he’s starting to learn as he tries to get his feet back under him, hissing at the pull on his wound. It rather feels like all of his insides are about to spill out.

He looks up just in time to catch her foot to his face, which sends him smashing back into the wall, head ringing, vision blurring.

“You know, I used to admire you,” she says, though her voice feels like it is coming from somewhere very distant. “Even after what you did to me. You seemed so regretful, so earnest in wanting to make up to me. I thought you actually cared. You would’ve been the only one. But you were just looking out for yourself, weren’t you? Assuaging your own guilt and making sure I never told anyone about you.”

On the heels of the question comes her fist, whipping his head back, then again, and again.

She’s not wrong, he knows. He even deserves everything she’s giving him and worse for all the lies and deception, whatever intentions, good or ill, had motivated them. Good people get hurt by people like him. It’s been that way his whole life.

Except, this time she’s taken something very precious from him, and he’s still not virtuous enough to let her have it without a fight.

The next time her fist comes flying at his face, he encases her entire hand within his much larger one, stopping it in its path. He turns his head and meets her eyes. 

There must be something in his gaze now, because the look of fury on her face melts away and whatever would have taken its place will forever remain a mystery as he digs his oxfords into the floor and pushes her back, bringing a heavy book he’s picked up from the pile to whip it across her temple.

Now she’s the one stumbling inelegantly back, only just recovering in time to barely deflect his incoming assault, quick jabs and strikes, blocking and then trying to retaliate. When they pass a lamp upon a side table, she picks it up and hurls it at him, which he only barely dodges, ignoring the way pain cuts through the buffer of his adrenaline and shoots up his torso, almost robbing him of the ability to straighten. Instead he drops fully to the floor and shoots his foot out to knock her legs out from under her, scrambling on top of her when her back hits the floor with a thump—

—and dodges a fire iron that had been aimed at his eye, feeling instead the metal cut across his temple and through the scalp above his ear. Missing her first attempt to skewer him, she instead swings the iron like a bat, knocking him off of her.

He rolls across the floor and hits a table, knocking both it and its contents (some sort of statue, a book) to the floor. It takes him a moment to revive his energy, and it’s a moment too long because suddenly Markova is standing over him and bringing the fire iron down like a sword, running him straight through his stomach and into the wooden floor beneath him.

Echoes of what must have been his cry are fading in his ears when he comes to and stares at the iron rod jutting out from his middle, gaze travelling up to a triumphant if battered Markova hovering over him, hair all fallen out of her careful style, now hanging in bloodied wisps around her face. There’s a cut along her temple, her nose is dripping a line of blood that joins with the stream from her cut lip.

“I promise I’ll take care of him, better than you did, at any rate,” she says. “He is my maker, after all.”

And then with just as much force, she yanks the fire iron out, and it hurts far worse than it had going in.

He can taste blood choking at the back of his throat and for a moment he thinks he’d very well welcome final death as a reprieve from all this torment as she raises the blood-tipped rod back up again, preparing to driving it into his skull.

But from the corner of his eye, he sees it.

When she brings the fire iron swiftly down, she only drives the end of it into the floor as Harry rolls towards the gun, fingers closing around it. When he turns back up, he aims for right between her eyes with his ever deadly precision and fires.

She collapses to the floor, a smoking crater existing where most of her face used to be.

The gun immediately falls from his nerveless fingers and he sinks back to the floor, gritting his teeth, panting. He won’t die from this, he knows, but it’s always painful. He needs blood so very badly.

Reconciling himself to the fact that no one is going to come to his aid, Harry painstakingly tries to get his legs back under him, relying generously on pieces of furniture to help him stand, and when he does manage to put weight back on his feet, he nearly sinks back down to the floor again.

Clutching at his bleeding abdomen, he stares down at Markova’s corpse and doesn’t feel victorious. After all, it had been the treacherous course of his actions that led them here, and now he’s finished what he probably always would have done, what he does to anyone who gets too close to him.

He thinks about Eggsy then, and it’s a blow worse than anything he’s received tonight.

How he doesn’t think he’ll ever find him now. The world can sometimes be a large and unforgiving place.

_Eggsy._

Harry still feels him.

When he looks back to Markova’s body, he realises the feeling isn’t coming from her anymore.

No, Eggsy is close by. Eggsy is _here_.

The discovery renews him, drives him beyond the limits of his pain into a rejuvenated frenzy. He searches the floor, calling out to him. Pleads.

Until he comes across a smooth, metal door that must lead to the cellar, locked and reinforced by biometric security: a handprint scan.

He doesn’t feel anything when he turns and grabs a kitchen knife from the butcher’s block to fetch the hand it requires.

When he makes his way down into the cellar, what he finds makes him wish he could kill Markova all over again, except much more slowly and painfully. “Oh, Eggsy.”

Eggsy is unconscious, naked, and chained to a table. Catheters run through either side of his neck, his inner arms, and both femoral arteries in his thighs, drawing blood and sending it to some sort of large device resembling a dialysis machine beside him.

There’s a twin table beside him on the other side, empty but for the disconnected lines that must have once been attached to another being.

It’s rather easy to put the pieces together: blood pulled from Eggsy’s body and circulated through Markova’s as hers is cycled back through again until Markova’s body had enough infected blood to trigger the transformation. Painless. Violence-free. Markova had been clever enough to wrest her so-called gift right from Eggsy’s veins without ever needing his consent at all.

Bags of blood have been hung around Eggsy and are being pumped into him now. Harry has to assume they’ve been laced with sedatives to keep him under. It’s short work to disconnect him from the entire setup, picking up his lax body and cradling him to his chest.

“Come on,” he whispers, cupping Eggsy’s face. “Time to wake up now.”

Though he can hardly afford to lose any more blood right now, he nevertheless uses his teeth to bite deeply into the veins at his wrist, pressing the bleeding gash to Eggsy’s parted lips. “ _Wake up, Eggsy._ ”

Helpless to obey Harry’s command even in unconsciousness, Eggsy’s eyes fly open, pupils still blown wide from the lingering effect of the drugs, choking on the blood in his mouth until he swallows and realises what he’s tasting, then it’s all eager suckling and swallows.

Harry has to forcefully pry his mouth away after another minute, too lightheaded to let it go on for much longer despite never wanting it to stop.

Eggsy blinks as full awareness slots into place, meeting Harry’s eyes with sorrow. “Harry, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to kill those people. I didn’t have control! Please believe me.”

“I know, Eggsy. I know. It was the signal, not you. You couldn’t have known.” Harry shushes him, running a thumb across his lips. “Are you alright?”

Eggsy nods and then lets his gaze sweep the room around them. “I trusted her. I thought...I thought she was going to help me. I thought Kingsman would surely kill me now. But she...there was something in the blood she gave me. I didn’t even notice. Knocked me right the fuck out. Came to strapped to this fucking table. And she...she….”

“Stole your blood to turn herself into one of us,” Harry finishes. “I know. We had a rather heated debate about it.”

Eggsy seems to finally notice his injuries, feeling the wetness of Harry’s leaking blood soaking into his skin between them. Glancing down only increases his alarm. “Gods, you’re hurt. Jesus, what did she do to you?”

“It’s fine. It’s fine, Eggsy. Nothing that a little nourishment won’t fix. I’ve taken care of her. She won’t harm you again.”

Eggsy frowns, brows furrowing. “What do you mean?”

It’s not quite the reaction he had expected. “I think that’s something you’ll have to see for yourself.”

After they find the hoodie and trackies Markova had given Eggsy to wear before drugging him and divesting him of them anyway, they take advantage of the untainted blood from the refrigerator. For all that he's undergone, Eggsy's been well fed and physically well cared for. Harry takes in enough blood to set his wounds on the path to healing, not nearly enough for a full recovery yet, but at least he can walk without wanting to curl up and die.

After they make their way up from the cellar, Eggsy pauses in the doorway of the study, laying his eyes upon Markova’s corpse, still sprawled out across the floor, face mostly missing, as with her right hand.

“I had to, Eggsy,” Harry tries to explain, coming up behind him. “It was either her or me.”

“No, I get it,” Eggsy says softly. “I do. It’s just that...I feel like...I dunno. Something about her feels like she’s...a part of me now. That sounds stupid.”

No, it doesn’t at all, Harry bitterly thinks. “We should burn her body to make sure she—”

“No!”

Harry blinks, taken aback.

Eggsy turns to him, almost as surprised at his outburst as Harry, but his countenance just as quickly slips into realisation. “I can’t...I can’t let you do that, Harry. It feels... _wrong_. I can’t kill her.”

"It's too dangerous to leave any room for doubt, Eggsy."

"And that's always been up to you and Merlin to decide, is it?"

He strives for the patience he has in so very little supply. “Eggsy. She may already be beyond hope. She’s—”

“She’s _mine_ , Harry,” Eggsy says fiercely, and Harry can see the beast within him flashing across his eyes. “Maybe not what I would have wanted, but she’s _mine_ now. I don’t want her to die.”

Jealousy rears its ugly head again, compounded by the fact that Markova never deserved this, not Eggsy’s protection nor his love. A part of Harry wishes he had burned her body before ever letting Eggsy get near her.

Because the look in Eggsy’s eyes now tells him that he will _fight_ Harry on this one, would never forgive him if he went through with his original intentions.

“Then what do you propose we do?”

“Bring her downstairs, set up the rest of the blood. We don’t tell anyone about her.”

“You realise the nature of her injuries probably requires more blood than she has in her stores.”

“It’s a fighting chance. I at least owe her that.”

He wants to argue that Eggsy doesn’t owe her a damn thing, and though it takes everything within him not to flat out refuse and compel Eggsy to leave with him that instant and never think of Markova again, he finally nods his reluctant agreement. “Allowing for even the slimmest chance of her survival is incredibly, extraordinarily stupid. If I end up regretting this, Eggsy...but alright. A fighting chance.”

Eggsy marginally relaxes, shoulders sinking from their hunched position. “Thanks. I don’t know why I feel like...but thanks.”

He can’t help but reaching out the lay a hand heavy upon Eggsy’s shoulder as if to reassert his claim. “You know you have to come home now, Eggsy.”

Eggsy’s expression turns grim. “I know. Face the music and all that. Can’t imagine Merlin’s none too pleased.”

“He’s livid. So is Roxy for that little dart stunt you pulled.” Eggsy winces. “But he’s not going to have you killed, Eggsy. It wasn’t your fault.”

“He won’t toss me back into that room, would he?” The horror of it is written clear across his face. “Please don’t let him do that, Harry. I’d rather be dead.”

“I won’t let him do that either,” Harry says, squeezing his shoulder before gently tugging Eggsy closer, inviting him into his arms, and gratified when Eggsy goes willingly. Just as Markova is Eggsy’s, Eggsy is _his_. “I swear it.”


	7. Chapter 7

Harry hears and smells her long before they ever step out in the cold, crisp night: a slightly elevated heart rate, the light floral scent of expensive perfume, the acrid sting of gunpowder. He wonders how she was able to get into Russia not so long after him, but then, it is always a foolish mistake to underestimate Lancelot.

Eggsy must be in his head: he doesn’t even notice Lancelot leaning against the car just outside the gates until they’re almost on top of her. When he does, he pulls up short, almost taking a reflexive step back, eyes wide with alarm. “Rox,” he croaks out, and then nothing else.

“Merlin sent me to escort you back to London.” Lancelot betrays nothing in either her face (a stone wall) nor her tone (professional, absent of any familiarity or warmth). Harry wonders if she’s carrying one of Merlin’s specially modified pistols to make sure they all arrive at their destination.

Harry’s hand strays to his stomach in unbidden recollection. With the immense agony that one minor beam of light could bring, he’s not too keen on knowing for certain.

Not finding even a hint of solace Lancelot’s presence would normally bring, Eggsy’s shoulders sink. Harry rests his hand between his shoulder blades, both as comfort and to gently guide him towards the car. Lancelot opens the back door for them like the most obliging chauffeur.

“Thank you,” Harry says to her anyway, polite as ever.

It’s only when he climbs into the car after Eggsy that Harry notices the divider between the back and front seats: thick, reinforced glass with a fine metal grate woven through its layers. As Lancelot rounds the car to the driver’s side, he covertly tries the door handle. Locked from the outside. Merlin is taking no chances, then.

If Eggsy notices any of the safeguards, he doesn’t mention them, choosing instead to stare moodily out the windows as the Moscow neighbourhoods gradually transform into a motorway, then more rundown districts, then the trainyard.

As they walk along the many tracks and weave between unlinked boxcars, Eggsy slows his steps to fall into line beside Lancelot. Harry maintains his same steady gait a few steps ahead, and for a brief moment, considers actually trying not to eavesdrop, but he might as well ask the earth to reverse its rotation.

“How much did you see?” Eggsy quietly asks.

“Enough,” Lancelot says.

“Then you know. You know I’m not….”

“I don’t know what you are,” Lancelot says curtly. “Certainly not something _human_. Not anymore.”

There’s a long moment of silence, and then she asks, “Did it happen when you were ill for that long bout? That was a cover, wasn’t it?”

“Merlin kept me locked up in a windowless room several floors beneath the ground. Suspect he was going to tell you I bit it in the end and keep me down there forever before Harry convinced him to change his mind.” Eggsy’s tone is as bitter as poison. “So yeah, it was a cover.”

“I’m angry at Merlin too. You all lied me. Let me carry on none the wiser. What you did in that prison...it frightened me in a way I haven’t been in a long time. A few seconds slower and I’d be one of those bodies,” Lancelot quietly admits. “And then you dosed me, you bastard.”

Eggsy’s voice emerges thin and ravaged. “I’m _sorry_. I’m so sorry. I got scared. I just...reacted.” 

“Scared? You?” Lancelot’s tone grows incredulous. “Of what?”

“Of you rejecting me like you’re doing now.”

“I still have a job to do, Galahad.”

There is a long, telling silence after that, filled only with the sounds of their footsteps crunching over the frozen gravel. The trains in the yard seem endless, rows upon rows of silent metal serpents, but Lancelot seems to know exactly where they need to be, picking up her pace to surpass Harry’s languid gait and finally stopping beside one of the cars to open it.

Whatever old, rusting camouflage the carriage bore on its exterior had no relevance to its insides: the interior had been distinctly retrofitted to Kingsman specifications, and probably very recently too. Windowless. Fluorescent lights overhead. Thick, steel walls. A not so conspicuous refrigerator unit at the other end.

“Ain’t this a familiar sight,” Harry hears Eggsy mutter under his breath, too soft for human ears.

Harry’s gaze rests coolly on Lancelot. “Am I to assume the door locks from the outside only?”

“Precautions,” Lancelot answers smoothly, nothing breaking across her perfectly composed face. “At least you won’t show up on any thermal scans. If you would…?”

Though every instinct inside him is screaming at him to shove her away, take hold of Eggsy, and _run_ , get them both as far away from bloody Kingsman as possible, a primordial, animal fear that churns unpleasantly in his stomach and makes him feel a kind of coldness he has long since forgotten, Harry does no such thing.

Maybe he can’t anymore. Kingsman instills utter obedience and loyalty. He’s long since been indoctrinated to give up his whole life to it, whether he wants to or not.

So Harry turns towards the small set of stairs leading up into the carriage and ascends them even before conscious thought catches up with him, crossing the threshold into the cool, dark space, staring at his own warped reflection that gazes back at him from the wall. He listens to Eggsy follow suit, more hesitantly, and then the grinding screech of the door being slid shut, the final rattle of the forbidding lock slamming home.

Something about the finality of the sound jolts Eggsy, like a panic switch suddenly flipped on. He turns back to the door, frantically tries the handle, and finds it won’t budge, not even under his immense strength.

Eggsy begins pounding on the door as if trying to bust through it, shouting loud enough to ring across their mostly empty carriage, sharp and angry in Harry’s ears. “Hey! _Hey! What the fuck is this, Rox?”_

“Eggsy.”

“Please don’t do this! Rox! Roxy!”

Harry crosses the narrow width of the carriage, encircling Eggsy in his arms, in under a second, holding him so tightly, Eggsy’s bones would surely fracture if he were anyone, any _thing_ , else. “It’s just to get out of Russia. It won’t be like this forever. I won’t let that happen again, not ever again, I promise.”

Eggsy doesn’t need to breathe oxygen anymore, but his chest rises and falls rapidly in the old habit anyway. His tension feels like the ripples across the surface of a pond against Harry’s body, so Harry just tightens his embrace until the fear and fight drain from Eggsy’s body and he sags, only kept upright by Harry’s immovable arms. After several calming, shuddering breaths, Eggsy finally quietly says, “Don’t know why they got you in here too. You didn’t fuck up like me.”

 _Because they fear us. Because they know what I would do for you_. There were a hundred different amendments Harry could have made to that assertion, but instead he only savours the feeling of holding Eggsy close, sensing his own blood running through his veins, never wanting to take for granted the existence of this creature in his arms again.

 

_____

 

It’s well into the graveyard shift by the time they are ushered before Merlin—in his domain, not Harry’s, now that all illusions of authority are dropped. As resilient as they are to the normal exhaustion that plagues the human condition, even Harry feels a little worse for wear after a long, lightless train ride across the continent, and then a somewhat shorter if equally lightless trip across the channel. A quick look to Eggsy shows he looks about as much as Harry feels: worn down by anxiety and fear until all that's left is a dulled sense of apathy and exhaustion. There’s a grimness in his gallow-eyed gaze and a tight line to the insouciant smirk of his mouth. He sits in one of the chairs with a subtle, churlish sprawl. 

Harry wants to sink his teeth into him and shake him, his beautiful, defiant, reckless, sullen boy.

As is his habit, Harry cases the room: potential threats, escape routes. Roxy remains at vigil by the door. Her stance is deceptively casual but alert, unobtrusive but not unforgettable, strategically far enough away from the greatest dangers in the room, even with Harry's enhanced speed and reflexes. To say nothing of the safeguards and contingencies Merlin had woven all throughout Kingsman’s halls long, long ago to counter the likes of him.

As for the man in question: Merlin doesn’t sit at his desk so much as lean against it, peering at Eggsy unblinkingly and expectant, like a scientist coolly observing the disappointing results of his experiment. That’s all any of this was, wasn’t it? _An experiment_.

“After Markova fled, he rescued me from her basement, and we left. Ran into Lancelot right after,” Eggsy says, finishing his narrative recount with as much effortless efficiency as he did his ties.

Merlin narrows his eyes at him, then turns to Harry. “And she is now fully aware of yours and Eggsy’s condition?”

“Regrettably,” Harry says, and every ounce of it is the truth.

Even Merlin can’t find fault with that, which, if anything, makes him even grumpier. “That’s a dangerous secret to have loose in the world, especially considering whose hands it’s in.”

“We’ll keep looking for her,” Eggsy says earnestly, ever eager to make up for his failings, perceived and otherwise.

“ _You_ ,” Merlin says to Eggsy, “still have a lot answer for.”

“You know this wasn’t his fault, Merlin—” Harry automatically begins.

“Perhaps not any more or less than it is the fault of a bullet or grenade,” Melin counters, efficiently cutting through his words. “But it doesn’t lessen the impact or consequences of what happens when a weapon is let loose or left in the wrong hands. Russia is a shitshow. It’ll take years, probably decades, to reclaim the ground you’ve wiped out in a few minutes. I can’t risk having either of you out in the field anymore.”

Eggsy visibly slumps, but doesn’t seem surprised by the decree.

Though the announcement does not much affect him these days, Harry feels less resigned so much as angry on Eggsy’s behalf. “I’ve been able to operate in the field without incident for decades.”

Merlin just arches a challenging brow. “The world’s changed. Valentine saw to that. So did we.” 

“You’d rather shutter a young man’s entire life than—”

“He’s not a man!” Merlin viciously says, causing Eggsy to flinch.

In that moment, he has never looked more human.

Merlin must sense it too on some level because his hard eyes soften along with the lines of his body, voice emerging softer, almost pleading. “Don’t make me choose between my organisation and my friends anymore, Harry. I’ve had to learn the hard way what happens when I choose the latter.”

“I’ll quit.”

From behind them, Roxy sucks in a sharp breath. Both Harry and Merlin turn to Eggsy, who doesn’t look back at them so much as his hands folded politely in his lap. He’s not sitting up, nor is he sat rebelliously askew anymore. He’s simply smaller now: space and light. Resistance collapsing in on itself.

“No one is asking you to do that,” Harry is quick to assure, throwing Merlin a warning glance.

“No one needs to. It’s all but been implied,” Eggsy says, and doesn’t even sneer about it. “I get it, I really do. My fuck ups are worse than other agents’ fuck ups. It’s not worth it. Not any more.”

There is such simple conviction in his words, like Eggsy believes every syllable of them is the truth, that Harry opens and closes his mouth like a gaping fish, momentarily speechless. An impulsive part of him wants to be furious again. All that work and hope and trial to get Eggsy here, to see him flourish in the life Harry always wanted for him, is apparently easy enough for Eggsy to drop and walk away from without much of a fight in the end. It brings to mind a whole record of failure Harry wants to suddenly and cruelly put voice to, even as he irrationally knows it to be unfair: gymnastics, school, grades, marines—

The older, wiser, tireder part of him, however, wants to simply grab the boy and run again. Take him away from all of this. Protect him like he should have done and always failed to do. Kingsman is not a kind life to anyone, human or not.

“For once, you and I are in agreement,” Merlin says, appearing even sorrowful about that fact.

“Eggsy—” Harry begins.

“It’s fine,” Eggsy says shortly, though of course it’s not. There’s nothing on his face now, just a stony mask gazing back at them. “I can clean out my office and be out of your hair,” _figuratively_ , Harry’s mind always supplies when it comes to Merlin, “in an hour. And I _will_ be leaving. You don’t get to keep me here, Merlin. Not anymore.”

“And yet you already know I can’t simply let you go.” 

Eggsy’s flat, unchanging expression, perhaps with just a grimming line of his mouth, confirms as much. “That’s how it is then? Don’t want me but won't let me go? I’m not going to be shut up in your fucking underground prison again.”

“Then it seems you have two choices,” Merlin says, unruffled. “You can reclaim your room in the mansion or be put back in Harry’s care—”

“—Harry’s,” Eggsy bites out.

“—He’ll be fine with me,” Harry says at the same time, tone leaving no room for question.

“—in which case, you will remain in his house at all times. You are not to leave,” Merlin concludes.

There’s a beat of silence, a vacuum that is soon filled with palpable disbelief.

“You’re putting me under _house arrest_?”

“I’m putting into place the necessary controls we would require for someone like yourself to live outside of Kingsman’s grounds,” Merlin says.

“You’re just giving my lead a little more slack,” Eggsy counters with little more than a snarl. “But it’s still a prison, innit?”

“In truth? Yes, you could certainly see it that way.” Merlin leans forward without looking like he’s moved at all. The effect is subtle but immense, imbuing him with a looming, intimidating quality even as his voice remains soft, unthreatening. “It may be unfair, but when you joined Kingsman, you agreed no sacrifice was too great to protect innocent lives. Like it or not, this is your life now, Eggsy.”

Eggsy remains quiet for a very long time, troubled indecision written across his features as he processes Merlin’s heavy words. “And if I refuse?” he asks, though the question is absent of his usual defiance.

“Then you’ll be hunted to the ends of the earth,” Merlin tells him honestly. “And all resources and support will be withdrawn from your listed next of kin.”

Michelle. Daisy. The weight of that realisation dawns visibly on the boy, eyes widening a fraction, falling back into his chair with stunned wide eyes and more than a flash of hurt. In finding Eggsy’s greatest vulnerability, Merlin’s aim has always been true.

Eggsy struggles to reclaim some of his previously unshaken demeanour, swallowing. “You fucking bastard.”

Harry can’t help but agree.

Merlin tips his head a little as if in wordless acceptance. He’s never had many visible qualms about playing bad cop as needed, always able to keep his eye on the end goal no matter the means. Harry sometimes used to look at him and think, _You’re the best and worst of us_. Admiration or disgust depended on the context.

Today, it’s the latter.

“Looks like I ain’t really got any options then,” Eggsy finally says, sinking back into his previously exhausted resignation.

“As further precaution,” Merlin stands up and moves to one of the many ubiquitous seamless cabinets in his office to retrieve a medium-sized black case. He opens it to reveal a relatively slender circular band of metal ending in a conversely thick, blocky clasp to hold whatever circuitry and sensors were needed to do God only knows what. “This is a tracker with an embedded GPS chip, so we can know your exact location at all times.”

“Collaring me like a dog.” Eggsy’s smile is brittle, bordering on worryingly hysterical.

“In full disclosure: there is a mechanism in the collar that will be fitted over the back of your neck. If you do leave the premises to which you are assigned,” Merlin continues like he is reading a user’s manual, “Your spine will be immediately severed within a few metres of breaching the boundary.”

Both Harry and Eggsy look back at him in horror.

“Merlin….” Roxy finally speaks up for the first time, but a stern look sent in her direction yields nothing further.

“In your case,” Merlin says to Eggsy, “it’s debilitating, but not fatal.”

“There was a time I once trusted you with my life,” Eggsy says in a tone that holds wonder for his own past naivety. “And you used to look at me and see someone you respected. I didn’t _choose_ this, Merlin. I never would have chosen this in a million years.”

Harry doesn’t flinch; he’s too disciplined for that. Merlin’s eyes dart to him anyway, knowing.

“I don’t do these things out of hatred, Eggsy. I do them out of necessity. If you’ve seen what I’ve seen, you would understand.” Merlin’s voice holds a note of regret, but Merlin’s brand was never founded on malleable and wavering guilt.

No, Merlin’s misgivings are born from a particular quality of sorrow reserved for one who only feels sorry for what’s already been done. No going back now.

 

_____

 

The band at Eggsy’s throat catches the glints of all the city lights as the taxi shuttles them from the shop back to Harry’s home. Harry’s attention keeps getting drawn back to it like a fly to honey. It’s snug by necessity against his pale skin. With time, it will surely leave a mark of its own that would have been red if Eggsy’s skin held more oxygenated blood within it. In a terrible way, it’s an arresting sight, a stark symbol of restraint and control, which Harry has wrestled with all his life, even when he’d been alive.

But the fact that it is Merlin who controls the other end swiftly robs any such musings of their pleasure.

Instead, Harry tries to extend his own cold comfort, a cool hand reaching across the small gap between them in the dark to close over Eggsy’s and thread their fingers together. He is here, he wants to say. 

When Eggsy re-enters Harry’s home, he pauses just within the doorway like he’s seeing everything anew for the first time, the paintings on the walls, the old antiquities, and expensive, fussy furnishings. No bare surface allowed. Harry didn’t like emptiness unless he needed his focus to be laser sharp.

“I used to be so afraid of losing this place. It was my last lifeline to you. Now I can never leave. Couldn’t lose it if I wanted to,” Eggsy says, glancing at Harry over his shoulder, arching a brow imbued with empty humour. “How about that for irony?”

“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, any time,” Harry vows, even if it galls him that Merlin would need to be informed ahead of any such excursion.

Eggsy turns fully towards him, eyes glittering, his gait becoming predatory as he edges Harry against the closed door, hands gripping his shoulders, digging into bone and marble flesh hard enough to pulverise a weaker form. “You can start by taking my cock.”

Harry’s face turns, automatically nosing at Eggsy’s neck only to breathe in the corrupt scent of metal where he can no longer bite. The realisation of this loss fills him with sudden, undiluted rage. He could tear apart a church all over again.

“I need to feed,” he says, voice hard as steel, trying to keep his temper in check. 

“Don’t take too long,” Eggsy warns as he starts to back away, hands going for his tie, already loosened from when he had to be collared, to unmoor it completely from around his neck and drop it carelessly on the floor.

Harry retrieves several bags from the refrigerator and forgoes flavour for haste, ripping into bag after bag with his teeth and downing their chilled contents too swiftly to think about the less than ideal consistency or taste. By the time he’s finished, he feels very full, heady. Hot blood or no, the effect is the same on his body: sustenance sings in his veins, the world feels richer to his revived senses. His body warms, his heart practically beats within his chest again.

There’s a pounding in his ears when he staggers towards the living room, needing to pause and take in the sight of Eggsy, back to him, without a stitch on, standing amidst his furniture, pale and banded with muscle. It’s such a blatant visual feast, from his thick, strong thighs to the rounded firmness of his buttocks to the broad expanse of shoulders and equally carved arms. A single rude, possessive thought lances across his brain: _this is mine_.

Eggsy is his. Tainted blood of his blood, dead and reborn. His, his, his. No one else can have him. Not Markova, not Merlin, not Kingsman.

Eggsy tilts his head, exposing the long line of his neck, the gleam of the band on his skin, the darker thick clasp fixed at the nape of his neck. It is even more fascinating now that it’s the only adornment he wears. “Come here,” he tells Harry.

Harry crosses the floor, finds that as he nears Eggsy, he can’t help reaching out to touch, drawing his fingers down Eggsy’s cold spine, a palm across the planes of his still chest. He leans down and breathes in his skin, inhaling everything that is his own familiar scent. Everything that is his.

When his lips touch the skin-warmed metal of the collar, Eggsy suddenly turns in his arms, a hand reaching up to roughly grip Harry’s hair and yank him closer. He pulls at Harry’s tie and shirt collar until the material tears clean away, and before Harry can even speak, his teeth rip into Harry’s throat.

Harry gasps through the pain. Instead of wrenching himself away in reflex, he holds Eggsy tighter, because Eggsy is his to sustain, lets him swallow and swallow, dizzy with the rush of blood flowing out of him, until dots begin to dance in his vision and he feels like he’s shrinking inside his own body. Somewhere outside himself, he thinks he whispers, “ _Eggsy_.”

Eggsy’s teeth retract, leaving his blood to pump from the holes in his neck and soak into his shirt. The world jerks and spins when Eggsy pushes him over the back of the sofa; he blinks slowly as drops of blood fall onto the once pristine cream fabric in crimson Pollock splatters while Eggsy makes tatters of his clothes again, tearing them from his body like scraps of wet paper. He hardly cares, not when Eggsy bathes each newly exposed surface of skin with his lips, tongue, and the intermittent prick of sharp teeth that Harry weakly arches against.

Time becomes a loose, drifting entity; Harry feels caught in the muddy, warm whirlpool of his daze, fanning his fingers across the cushions. He’s abruptly shoved out of the sluggish mixture of his awareness by Eggsy’s cold, slick fingers pushing into him in cursory prep. Already it burns, because God, he hasn’t done this in _years_ , but he just winces, widens his stance, and pushes back because Eggsy is his and he would give this boy everything.

And then Eggsy’s cock pushes into him, a blunt intrusion prying him open with acute pain that gradually dulls into a throbbing ache. Eggsy moves within and over him, hips smacking into his arse hard enough to sting the skin, smashing him against the back of the couch over and over, cock fucking in deep and rough. The couch moves across the floor. It leaves him breathless. There’s a tendril of pleasure that cuts through the soft haze, the way Eggsy’s cock strokes against his prostate like a current of electricity singing along his insides. His mouth falls open; he lets himself be rocked, fucked, accepts the ache of his hip bones grinding into the hard frame of the furniture and the twinges that run down his neck.

Harry thinks he could settle into this retinue of pleasure pain, the pulse of the remaining blood in his veins seemingly beating with each thrust, until Eggsy clamps a hand over the back of his neck and hauls him up like a mother cat. His head falls back against Eggsy’s shoulder as Eggsy gives a forceful deep thrust while his teeth sink into the unmarred side of Harry’s neck.

Too much blood, he knows. Some deeper instinct demands he push back, lash out, and shove Eggsy off of him, but Harry ruthlessly stamps it out as quickly and forcefully as it had arisen. Because Eggsy needs him, and he needs Eggsy, and there’s no end to what Harry would give him, not after he has taken so much. So he digs his fingers into the edges of the couch until the wooden frame splinters and snaps beneath his fingers instead of Eggsy’s spine. His vision begins to darken at the edges as the world shrinks, pulled smaller and smaller through the holes in his neck, given freely, consumed greedily.

Eggsy’s pace stutters, his steady, swift rhythm faltering as his climax overtakes him. He releases his hold on Harry’s neck as his mouth goes slack and Harry thinks somewhere, vaguely, he can feel an echo of his moan running through his own body. Eggsy’s pleasure is Harry’s pleasure just as his blood is Harry’s blood, and he’s glad, so very glad. He wants to raise his hand and caress Eggsy’s jaw. He wants to lull his head to the side until their lips slide together like two crashing planets and he tastes their shared blood on Eggsy’s tongue. He wants and wants. He still wants so much, even when he tries to be selfless.

But most of all, he wants to sink into these dark, dark waters, held by Eggsy, all of himself consumed by Eggsy, his creation, _his_ , as Eggsy calls out to him, at first in blood, Harry thinks, like a siren song—

—but then it’s loud, ringing in his ears, sharp with worry, one poignant shard of fear before it fades out, sounding further and further away, like a piece of driftwood being ripped away from the shore and dragged out to sea.

 

_____

 

Sound returns first. Molecules of shifting of air and dust. The intricate layers of bedlam humans produce from all around him: next door, two doors down, three, several blocks. Watching the evening news, a sports match, cooking supper, banging on the radiator, listening to the radio, walking out of Waitrose, arguing, laughing, shouting, cursing, calling down, _food’s ready!_ as cars trundle straight past, the train rumbles below and slows to a stop, _This is Gloucester Road station_. _This is a District Line train to Barking_.

When Harry opens his eyes, the lights are off in the bedroom and only the dim illumination from the neighbouring houses bleeds in through the window. It’s much quieter now, only the scurry of nocturnal creatures rifling through loose bin tops and the occasional night walker’s footsteps clambering along the pavement pass through the periphery of his awareness.

His body feels as heavy and hollow as a sarcophagus.

In fact, the only time he has ever experienced such leaden exhaustion was when Merlin had inadvertently starved him to Eggsy’s death. He’s not so ravenous now as he was then, though. His veins feel freshly full, like parched earth soaking up a storm. He’s been fed, but he cannot remember how or when. He doesn’t know how long he was out, but knows from the lingering sluggishness of his thoughts it has been for some time.

When he turns his head a few degrees, he sees Eggsy perched at the end of the bed, bundled up his hoodie all the way up to his chin as if to hide the shameful collar. His back is a cowed, dejected curve, brows and mouth pinched in unhappy contemplation. The modicum of light from the outside warms his face, makes it almost seem mortal.

“You almost let me kill you.” Eggsy’s tone is sullen, but there’s a hardened, grudging edge to it. He doesn’t move a muscle, preternaturally still as only creatures such as they can be.

Harry tries to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. It takes several attempts. “Had I?”

“I was so angry. I was so angry, and I got….” The words die away, though Eggsy’s mouth opens and closes several times. His eyes are wide and glassy with realisation. His throat bobs as he swallows. “I almost killed you.”

“But you didn’t,” Harry immediately says, swift and sure. He struggles to sit up. His arms are shaky and unstable, his whole body is ungainly, but he manages to manoeuvre himself closer to Eggsy, within arms reach. “Eggsy, you stopped. You replenished me after.”

Only, as soon as his hand alights on Eggsy’s shoulder, Eggsy almost violently reels back, jumping to his feet several steps away. It would have been aggressive but for the way Eggsy hunches in on himself, arms wrapped around his middle like he’s protecting his vital organs from a rain of blows. “Merlin’s right. Every time I think I’ve got a handle on it, I slip and fuck up. I’m a danger to everyone around me. You were supposed to be the failsafe, but I almost killed you too.”

Only in hindsight does Harry realises his mistake. It was his responsibility. Eggsy was _his_. “We both got carried away.” He should have stopped Eggsy, and now he’s only driven him further away. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“Why are you apologising?” Eggsy nearly shouts at him, his incredulity writ clear on his face.

“I let my selfishness and guilt over the collar and your resignation supercede my common sense. If it hadn’t been for me, none of this would have happened.” He can see every single collision of his life and Eggsy’s, from Lee to ripping his throat open. “I keep taking everything away from you. I know I ruined your life, Eggsy.”

Eggsy doesn’t deny it, but his expression softens, and with it, the mounting fraught tension in the room. He looks down at his trainers more than Harry. “I been dealt bad hands before, not all by you. This one’s just...harder to sort out. Doing a fucking piss poor job of it.”

“How can I help?” Harry insists, desperate. He wants to reach out and grab Eggsy, pull him in closer. He could do it faster than even Eggsy could blink. He could command Eggsy to come to him. The few feet between them might as well be a chasm. His fingers clench at the sheets until the fabric is twisted around his fingers. 

Eggsy finally lifts his head and looks him square in the eye, a shadow of his previous anger flinty in his gaze the only lively thing left in them. “Don’t ever let me do that to you again.”

It’s not what Harry had meant. It’s surely not all that Eggsy needs now, but the boy is skittish, every line in his body poised in wariness, like one wrong move and he’ll bolt through the window, and Harry will lose him forever.

All Harry can do, though, is weakly nod. “I won’t.” A beat. “Does Merlin know about this?”

Something flickers across Eggsy’s face too fast for Harry to readily identify. Perhaps guilt, perhaps residual anger. “No,” he admits, face finally cracking with shame.

“Good,” Harry assures. “It’s none of his business, what happens between you and I. Now...will you at least return to bed?”

The wariness returns. Harry wants to curse. Eggsy even takes a reflexive step back, shaking his head. “Don’t think that’s a good idea. I should go back to the guest room. You still need rest.”

“I’d rest better knowing you were here with me.” He’s not above manipulation, it would seem, but he’s far too determined to break Eggsy out of this self-loathing mindset to care. “Please.”

Eggsy hesitates, expressive features twisting with his indecision and reluctance. “Fine.” He even takes a few tentative steps closer. “Just don’t….”

And when no more words are forthcoming, Harry prompts, “Yes?”

“Just don’t...touch me. I can’t...please don’t touch me.” His voice wavers perilously, his whole face threatens to break, and suddenly he seems as delicate and fragile as glass.

In answer, Harry painstakingly shifts his tired body to the far side of the bed, leaving plenty of space for Eggsy with little danger of contact. “Please,” he says again, because while he still aches to hold him, to feel that low, connective song thrum between them until it becomes a constant ringing in his very bones, he’d rather have Eggsy beside him and not be able to touch him than to not have him at all.

After another long moment of hesitation, Eggsy reluctantly climbs into bed with barely a jostle of the mattress and stiffly lies down on his back, hands folded over his chest. 

When Harry is sure Eggsy won’t bolt again, he settles back down beneath the covers beside him, mirroring Eggsy’s position on his back. 

For a long time, they remain this way, silent and alert, two inhuman creatures staring up at the bedroom ceiling.

“Why do we even pretend anymore?” Eggsy whispers.

“Pretend what?”

“Being human. Pretending to sleep. Keeping our food out of sight to not offend any delicate sensibilities. Hiding the monster within us.” Eggsy’s tone is more resigned than antagonistic. 

Harry considers the question. “Do you like it when you let the monster out?”

“...no,” Eggsy admits after a worrying length of time.

“That’s why.”

Eggsy sighs. “Sometimes I wonder what’s the point. No one ever gonna accept us as human once they know.”

“No,” Harry agrees, rolling onto his side to study Eggsy’s profile, the slope of his upturned nose, the sharp cut of his brow. He tries to find the collar at his throat, but there are too many tightly bundled up clothes in the way.

His fingers twitch, but he dares not breach their self-imposed distance.

After that, Eggsy remains quiet, and even shuts his eyes. His chest doesn’t move up and down in unnecessary breath. He doesn’t move a millimetre. Utterly still.

Harry tries to sleep, or accomplish their approximation thereof, but he became too used to Eggsy’s body curled around his. The world keeps him wide awake now, and the wide valley of separation between them seems to engulf him in a cold he’s not supposed to feel anymore. 

Before Eggsy, he used to spend the long insomniac hours of the night steadily making his way through Kingsman’s ample library or reading every mundane file on its servers he was privy to (and many to which he was not). He’d while away the time at the gun range until his aim became unerring and Merlin yelled at him to stop wasting so much expensive ammo. He’d walk and walk and walk through the streets of the city, memorising every building and road, until he knew London as well as he knew every crease and line of his hands.

(In the last decade or so, it’s been truly crap telly. Infomercials and low-budget series and inane talk shows.)

This time, he’s afforded the mercy of an exhausted, recuperating body. At some point during the night, he must have become insensate enough to lose track of the painfully tedious, ever constant passing of seconds enough to become aware of the thin rays of morning sun irritating his skin.

Harry blinks against the painful light and shuffles away from it until he’s sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. When he looks back, Eggsy has curled up into a small ball, unmoving, even though the sun has to be burning his skin as well. “Eggsy.”

Eggsy doesn’t stir or give any indication he’s even heard Harry.

Harry stands up and tests his strength: a little shaky, but solid enough for him to round the bed and swiftly shutter the blackout curtains against the daylight, plunging the bedroom into darkness. Enough sun still bleeds around the edges to give faint impressions of outlines though, and he just makes out Eggsy’s huddled form. “Eggsy. I’m going to fix breakfast now. Are you hungry?”

Nothing.

He dares to reach out and touch Eggsy’s shoulder.

Eggsy’s eyes snap open, baring sharp teeth and a low, inhuman growl before realising where he is and who he’s with. Harry keeps his grip on his arm firm. Eventually the animal is wrestled back under control, enough for Eggsy to look at him with an almost pleading gaze that is just as swiftly muted into dull flatness. “No,” he says hoarsely.

“You’re not hungry?” Harry asks in disbelief.

“No,” Eggsy repeats, glaring at Harry briefly before rolling over to turn his back to him.

So this is how it’s to be.

“Eggsy.” He tries for patience. He really does. “You have to eat. It’s not optional.”

“Do I?” Eggsy says, an echo of a challenge. “What’s the worst that can happen? I go ballistic, this thing breaks my neck. I can’t hurt anything.”

Harry clenches his teeth. “I could compel you.”

“You could,” Eggsy agrees. “Breaking a promise is hardly the worst thing you’ve done.”

He still, he's proud to note, does not flinch, even if it's a near thing this time. “Eggsy. Please.”

He watches Eggsy’s shoulders move as he sighs and rolls back towards Harry. A peek of the silver collar glints from where his hoodie has shifted. “At least if I starve, I’ll be so outta my mind, I won’t be aware of this anymore. You can keep me chained up in your attic, even. Ain’t that a kind of mercy?”

It’s a sickening image because Harry can visualise it perfectly. “I won’t compel you. But I am going to go downstairs and heat up the blood. Then I’ll return, and you will drink it, even if I have to pry your mouth open with my hands and pour it down your throat.”

It’s to Eggsy’s dark scowl that Harry does just that. By the time Harry clears the steps with a warmed bag in each hand, Eggsy has sat up in the bed, staring at both them and Harry with a profound, hurtful indifference. He holds out a limp hand. “Fine. Give me the bag.”

He makes sure Eggsy drains it before something within him dares to relax, and he thinks maybe he can even put up with Eggsy’s sullen attitude, but once Harry takes the emptied back from Eggsy’s hands and braces himself for another smart remark, Eggsy merely scoots back down onto the bed and curls back up on his side away from Harry.

“Is that all you intend on doing today?” Harry asks peevishly.

“Why not?” Eggsy’s right shoulder twitches, perhaps in some semblance of a shrug. “Got all the time in the world.”

The empty bag crinkles in Harry’s clenched hand.

“You should have your meal before you get to work,” Eggsy says without looking at him. “It’s getting cold.”

“...I thought I’d take a few days off,” Harry says. More days off, that was, given how long he’d unintentionally been down for the count. A fortunate thing, in retrospect, that he had already informed Merlin not to expect him in for some time yet. “Get you settled in.”

He hears a scoff before Eggsy turns to face him, eyes glittering with antipathy. “What? Help ease my transition into captivity?”

Harry swallows helplessly. “I’m trying, Eggsy.”

At once, whatever hardened, angry thing that had been lurking behind Eggsy’s eyes softens. “I know. I know...I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m….” Harry isn’t sure if it’s any better to see that intensely vulnerable sheen within them again, though. “I think you should still go back to work.”

The reflex is startling in its viciousness. _No_. “Eggsy….”

“I’ll be fine here, yeah?” Eggsy says. “Gotta get used to this. It’s better to do it by myself like before. Besides, the world still needs you.” And not, apparently, him, goes unsaid.

What can Harry say to that? Every rigid line in Eggsy’s body pleads for that distance. It’s the only thing he’s all but asking for, so it must be the only thing Harry can freely give, no matter how much it feels like being punched in the heart. “You’ll be sure to eat?”

Eggsy almost rolls his eyes. “And all my vegetables, Mum.” The inadvertent mention of his family, however, makes him grimace. He still hasn’t seen them since his change, and now he can’t be certain if he ever will again.

“And you’ll call if you need anything. If something comes up.”

“Yeah, yeah. On my honour as a…” It had been on the tip of his tongue. A _Kingsman_. They both wince. “I’ll be fine, Harry. Now go eat and go to work. You’re already gonna be late.”

Harry glances down at his ever cooling and therefore ever unappealing breakfast, darkened to a muddy brown hue by the yellow tint of the plastic. He thinks about the smell of Eggsy skin, of tasting hot blood flowing across his tongue, right from Eggsy’s bared throat. “I suppose some things really don’t change after all.”

 

_____

 

Going back to Kingsman in an attempt to make some headway on the ever multiplying amount of forms, budgets, briefings, and reports he’s got to sign off on was a fool’s errand. He barely had the temperament to suffer this sort of bureaucratic nonsense as an agent; he has absolutely none whatsoever now, not when his mind keeps wandering back to Eggsy with worry or second-guessing his decision to leave him alone.

Sometimes Harry thinks Merlin promoted him to Arthur as a special form of punishment.

He phones Eggsy at lunchtime both as a way to check up on him and to remind him to eat.

“I’m fine,” Eggsy huffs. Harry likes to imagine there’s a note of fondness in his tone, but it’s more likely annoyance. “Ate and everything.”

For the rest of the week, and the week after, every day remains much the same.

At night, they feign sleep. Eggsy keeps himself to the edge of their bed to avoid any incidental contact. He lingers while Harry gets up in the morning and heats up their breakfast. He doesn’t protest, but there’s a barely controlled grimace on his face every time he accepts the bag from Harry. When Harry leaves for the shop, he’s still in bed. He’s more energetic when Harry calls in the afternoon, all steady assurances and impatience to hang up. By the time Harry gets home, he's always sat at the window sill just after the sun’s gone down. Harry asks questions about his day and what he did, but care barely drag out a monosyllabic answer before he heats them up their supper and Eggsy stays by the window until it’s, once more, time to retire.

It’s a very convincing impression.

Except that Eggsy’s skin only grows more wan, the bruises beneath his eyes more dark, and the light in his eyes more dull. At night, Harry obsessively studies and notes the increasing prominence of his bones, looks but cannot touch.

Worries incessantly.

The afternoon is filled with meetings, to which Harry pays barely any attention. If anyone else notices his state of distraction, they don’t remark upon it.

All except Merlin, of course.

“You know,” he says to Harry once Percival and Tristan’s holographic forms have flickered away. “I could have a cardboard cutout made of you and have it sit in on these things. Would probably work just as well.”

“Surely your resourcefulness would lend you the means to do something more creative than that,” Harry says. “An animatronic robot would be greatly appreciated.”

“I was surprised you came back so soon. Perhaps you should reconsider.”

“My presence at home was neither necessary nor desired,” Harry says, pushing away from the dining table and gathering up his tablet to move back to his office. “But if you’re so keen on seeing the back of me, perhaps you ought to collar me to my home as well.”

Merlin easily falls into step beside him. They’re evenly matched for stride, walking through Kingsman’s halls together. “What? The Arthur promotion wasn’t a stranglehold enough?”

Harry refuses to let him see how the remark grates on his nerves. “How fast could you have cameras set up in the house if I took Eggsy out for an evening?”

He can practically feel Merlin’s brows shoot off his head. “You’d allow me to put eyes in your home.”

“I need to make sure he’s doing okay,” Harry explains. “And only I would be able to access them. Your involvement as far as Eggsy is concerned ends at my front door.”

At least Merlin doesn’t argue the point. “I could have my team in and out in two hours. Audio as well?”

“Yes.”

“Eggsy won’t like it if he finds out.”

“I’ll deal with that when we come to it.” 

“You don’t trust him,” Merlin notes.

“It’s not what you’re thinking.” But Harry doesn’t care to elaborate any further.

Merlin doesn’t inquire further. Perhaps he assumes he knows already. “And when would you like it done by?”

“Tonight,” Harry says. He knows he sounds desperate. Maybe he is.

It’s simple enough to come up with an excuse to give to Eggsy: after two weeks, they both deserve a night out, and Harry tries not to make it seem like it’s a reward for good behaviour. He takes Eggsy to see a play, something mindless and silly, and then out for a simple walk in lieu of after-show drinks they cannot have.

And Eggsy seems rather happy through it all. He gets to wear a fine suit again, both on account of the occasion and to mask his collar. It’s getting loose, Harry observes, but still drapes well. He’s always been a social creature, and simply being among people is enough to noticeably buoy his spirits and return a little more life to the growing despondency that has begun to permeate every aspect of his demeanour.

He even lets Harry hold his hand for the entire night, and for that alone, Harry is glad they did this.

When they return home, there is no trace of Merlin’s handiwork anywhere to be found, not even when Harry applies his own more acute senses, he is relieved to note. He dares to assist Eggsy in peeling off his jacket, and when Eggsy lets him do this too, he can’t help leaning in to brush his lips across Eggsy’s jaw. At Eggsy’s shudder, he flinches back. “I apologise. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“It’s fine,” Eggsy says, turning to face him, gaze bright with naked longing. “I miss you. I miss this.”

“I’ve missed you too.” Harry puts every ounce of feeling that has accumulated over the past weeks into his words. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” Eggsy breathes, and before Harry can follow through, he grabs Harry’s face anyway and pulls him in until their lips meet.

Anything more can no longer be an impulsive endeavour, but it’s been so long since they’ve touched each other like this, and now even Eggsy is willing to put up with the decidedly ardour-cooling act of heating up enough blood, downing a bag each like medicine, just so he can press himself up against Harry and feel the ever-novel sensation of warmth on warmth.

“No biting,” Eggsy moans, pulling back just enough for Harry to nose behind his ear, down the curve of his neck, avoiding the metal band to lick at the delicate line of his collarbone. “Just...let’s just pretend to be _normal_. Just this once.”

The urge never really goes away, but the concentration Harry needs to keep his teeth to himself, to grip Eggsy’s wrists above his head and only skim his lips and tongue across his perfect, pale skin, brings other details to his attention. The different, coarser texture of Eggsy’s moles. The sparse, wiry famine of dark hair unevenly smattered across his chest and forearms. The way faint lines had begun to crease his forehead and beneath his lust-blown eyes, around the wide slash of his loose mouth, now all halted in their tracks for the foreseeable future.

This time when Harry sinks down on Eggsy’s cock, Eggsy just grips his hips to brace him, but allows Harry to control the rhythm and speed. Slow at first, so slow. He wants to savour this with the full extent of his senses: how full he feels, how good, so very good, it is every time he shifts his hips just a little on each downstroke, and the head of Eggsy’s cock strokes his prostate as he slowly coaxes an ember into a fully blazing fire.

There’s a glint of white teeth below him as Eggsy bites down on his own lower lip, struggling with the restraint to not make it bleed, and Harry tries to help him by bending back down and filling his mouth with kisses and tongue instead, dilute his attention with a hand that tenderly wanders, from pinching the buds of Eggsy’s blood-filled nipples to tracing the swallows of his throat to drawing one of Eggsy’s hands from their bruising grasp on his hip to wrap around his neglected prick and wank him off in delicious firm strokes.

 _Normal_ , echoes like a chant across his mind as the hot bloom of climax surges through him and he burrows his face into the sheets by Eggsy’s neck, rocking his hips back to shove Eggsy’s cock deeper inside, wishing his skin were sweat slickened and copper-scented and flushed, but both of them are as dry and cool as the air.

 _Normal_. Eggsy plants his feet firm against the mattress and deftly flips Harry onto his back so he can draw Harry’s long legs up and back to fuck into him hard and fast, the light sheen of Harry’s come slipping further down his stomach with each rigourous thrust, his bitten off whines finally coalescing into a long, low moan into Harry's chest as he comes inside him.

 _Normal_. The glister of metal at his throat like a beacon in the dark, stark against the white of Eggsy’s skin, remaining still and unyielding beneath the shifting tide of tendons, muscles, and primitive forces it is meant to hold back.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because every time I think I've written the final chapter of this, I don't. There are probably five million typos in this. Will fix at some point.

It begins to feel like the first time when Eggsy emerged from that frightening, all-consuming darkness into his second life. Trapped in the cold grave of his starving body, he could barely find the wherewithal to surface from the mire and understand the world around him: where he was, what had happened. He only knew he couldn’t move, something in his body wouldn’t let him, and that there was a force greater than himself looming over him like a watchful predator. His throat was a constant agony, never quite healing, ripped apart and exposed. The scant amount of blood he was allowed seeped out of it anyway, even as another hand tried in vain to keep it all in.

Only this time, instead of slowly surfacing from that overwhelming abyss-like darkness, Eggsy feels like he’s ever slowly slouching towards it, feet sliding forward of their own volition, drone-like, no matter how hard he tries to dig his heels in.

Oh, there are those bright moments: any time spent with Harry, being held and caressed by him like Harry has never seen anything more precious in all the decades he has lived and died. Feeling their shared blood moving in their veins like a separate living entity. In those moments, he can fool himself into being content, even happy.

Mornings leak in like damp in a cellar, until Harry stirs around him and promptly goes about getting ready for the day. There isn’t precisely a cold absence left in the bed in his wake, at least not physically, but whatever continuous hum and closed loop circuitry that exists between them is snapped apart each and every time like fresh heartbreak.

Eggsy attentively tracks each of Harry’s movements through the house with the extent of his senses: from the screech of metal as Harry pushes clothes hangers bearing fine, bespoke suits from one side of his wardrobe to the other to locate the precise one he wants to wear to the click of the hob going on and the air-sucking ring of blue flame igniting around the burner. He listens for the brittle creak of wood giving way beneath the weight of Harry’s feet on the stairs and metal pins and tumblers revolving in the door knob when he turns it, revealing himself in the bedroom doorway by the faintest traces of morning light allowed to seep into the room from around the curtains.

“Breakfast, Eggsy.” Harry sets Eggsy’s bag down on his bedside table and then climbs into bed to curl around him, skin freshly warm and flush from his own meal. He smells like iron and salt and the faintest touch of his favourite cologne, and it draws Eggsy from his hibernation as well as any spring.

Like this, lulled by Harry’s borrowed warmth and touch, it’s so easy. An afterthought to just tear open the bag and down its content without tasting it, even though the blood is heated perfectly, lush and velvety thick, just a hint of plastic taste from its container. But he doesn’t want to see blood as a luxury to savour: he needs it to be a burden. 

When he can feel his veins expand and the world light up and every nerve ending firing, all he wants to do is pull Harry back to him in an inviting kiss. Sometimes, it will work a treat: Harry melts against him, pushing him slowly back onto the mattress and covering him with his body, a heavy, solid weight. Eggsy can cleverly divest him of his clothes faster than it takes Harry to carefully assemble them. They would sometimes just grind against each other, cocks hard and leaking, the slide gradually becoming easier; or Harry would lick and scrape his teeth down his body, finally bringing Eggsy off in his mouth while pressing indentations into his hips, or, if Eggsy gets him especially worked up, he’d retrieve the lube from the drawer and fuck him or turn around and let Eggsy fuck him on all fours, excruciatingly slow, until climax felt like a last line of defence. The point is, after all, to delay their inevitable parting as much as possible.

After the last rush from the blood is spent and the mirage dissipates like morning fog, Harry would sometimes chide him for making him late while barely making a move to get up for at least another half hour, running his hands down Eggsy’s spine, from collar to the small of his back, then over his hip, across his stomach, hungrily possessive.

But most of the time, Harry immediately breaks away from him, visibly reluctant but determined, usually armed with an excuse against Eggsy’s wheedling. Important meetings that cannot be rescheduled (“You think most meetings are a waste of time.”). A growing backlog of work (“Work will always be there.”). Merlin needs to show him something important (“Since when do you follow Merlin’s schedule?”).

The recruiting trials.

Eggsy can’t find it himself to respond.

“I didn’t put forth a candidate,” Harry admits. “I couldn’t bear to.”

It makes him feel a little better. Not by much. Harry’s small protest doesn’t make a significant difference to the magnitude of his loss or in the grand scheme of things, but Eggsy appreciates the gesture all the same.

And then Harry leaves.

Harry leaves and Eggsy feels like the last flame of his light is extinguished. Like he’s been put away into a dark corner of a cupboard, his usefulness now over until Harry returns.

It hurts to think of it that way. He knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t help it. He’s used to more freedom than this, of feeling small but ultimately harmless to the world. Now after all that training and soul searching and superior transformation, he’s a force of destruction and feels no better for it.

All these thoughts sit on his chest and in his head like growing tumours. His collar feels like it is slowly strangling him, a noose that only grows tighter every time he breathes. He finds it difficult to move once Harry isn’t there to drive him forward, and by the time he stirs, it’s already getting on into afternoon. Harry will call soon to check up on him.

He knows he’s cutting off his nose to spite his face, the gaping hole in his stomach feeling like it’s yawning wider each day, but without distraction, the sight of dark brown blood in those bags makes him feel ill. It’s repulsive. He’d rather starve.

At first, Eggsy is stupid, bleating out flimsy lies until Harry’s interrogations grow more terse and the pinched line between his brows almost becomes a permanent groove. Now Eggsy puts more effort into it, emptying blood bags into the sink and leaving them crumpled up in the dustbin. Keeps his lunchtime conversations with Harry short. Harry is a trained interrogator. He picks up on the slightest contradictory scrap of evidence, the smallest trace of wavering conviction.

Throughout the day, his focus tunes in and out like the signal of an old radio, be it for a few minutes, but more increasingly, hours. In some twisted way, the growing weakness and exhaustion helps. If immortality is to be so interminable, at least Eggsy doesn’t have to be so acutely aware for the majority of it. 

He wonders about Markova. _His_ , even if she stole his unwilling blood to free herself from all the chains of her world. She was still his. The thought of her makes him ache and long for in ways he finds difficult to describe. It’s bone deep and intangible and yet as real as instinct, like the loss of a limb. He wonders if she managed to survive. If she’s still down in that basement, aware and starving, unable to move but unable to die, trapped in the half-life Eggsy is all too familiar with. He can’t sense her out in the world like Harry claims he can sense him. Then again, Eggsy is weak. He’s too new and ignorant with all this. Would it have been more merciful to have burned her body? Did he only condemn her to a fate worse than death? He doesn’t know.

The number of missed calls, texts, and voicemails grows until his phone gets too full. His mum, mostly. He texts her back with enough reassurances to keep her from storming over. Eventually, that won’t be enough, but she’s still under the impression he’s frequently abroad for work more often than not.

One night, Harry arrives home later than usual, and when he does, he doesn’t come alone. Eggsy smells JB before he hears him, the slightly sour stench of his canine breath, the scents of the forests, the kennel, and other dogs. Then there’s the jangle of JB’s metal tags and the click of his nails on the floorboards, the sounds of his high-pitched excitement and whuffling pants.

“Aren’t you happy to be home again, JB?” he hears Harry coo to his dog. “I know it’s been too long this time.”

It’s enough to stir Eggsy from his perpetual perch by the window, this unexpected change in routine. He finds himself crossing the threshold to the bedroom, soundlessly crossing the landing and hesitantly approaching the top of the stairs to catch sight of JB’s wagging curly tail. “What are you doing?” he finally asks.

His voice causes JB’s ears to perk up and look to him, but he doesn’t run up the stairs to his former master as he once would have done. Like looking at a stranger.

“He’s your dog,” Harry says. “I thought it time you start caring for him again.”

“He’s better off in the kennel.” Eggsy folds his arms across his chest and turning to go.

“But you’re not.”

It gives Eggsy pause, makes him turn and look back.

“Do you think me so blind? So foolish?” Harry asks when Eggsy doesn’t say anything. The way he looks at Eggsy, hard eyes, grim mouth, says everything. _He knows_.

No point in even denying it. Eggsy shrugs. “You think a dog who don’t even like me’s gonna fix everything?”

“No, but it’s a start. It gives you someone to care for. It makes you look to something outside yourself,” Harry explains.

Is that an unsubtle dig at Eggsy’s self-centredness of late? So be it. “Maybe I’m getting sick of caring for something, only for Kingsman to take it away.”

“JB likes me just fine, regardless of what I am,” Harry says, ignoring Eggsy’s outburst. As if to prove the point, he crouches down and holds out his hand, bidding JB to come. JB does so immediately, with ease and eagerness, and Harry rewards him with several head rubs and scratches behind his ears down to beneath his collar. “I don’t see why it can’t be the case with you as well.”

Eggsy narrows his eyes.

“Well, come down here and feed him. He’s your responsibility. If you want to walk him, just tell me before you do so and I’ll make sure you’ll have free range to leave the house.” Obviously not without attentive monitoring, goes unsaid.

Despite his suspicions, Eggsy slowly makes his way downstairs, still scrutinising Harry for any sort of ulterior motive. “And that’s it? Not gonna say anything about the blood? The lying?”

If he expected to wind Harry up, he’s sorely disappointed. Harry just regards him placidly, as untroubled as a calm sea. “It is, as they say, Eggsy: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. I’ve done my utmost, I’m not going to do it anymore. If you want to starve yourself, then that’s your prerogative.”

Eggsy blinks, taken aback by the almost callously issued words. 

“Of course, if you do choose to starve, there will be no one to take care of JB,” Harry continues as innocently and mild-mannered as he once had been to Rottie in the Black Prince on that fateful first day. “I won’t feed him. I won’t give him water. I won’t care for him. I’ll let him die.”

“You really think I believe you’d do that?” Eggsy sneers. “You like dogs more than you do most people. You had your own fucking dog stuffed. Your house is covered in bizarre dog paintings.”

“You forget, I also shot my dog for a job,” Harry says, arching a brow. “I’d let yours die simply to prove a point. I am a monster, after all.”

He renders Eggsy speechless as he merely slides past him to make his way upstairs and change out his of suit, leaving Eggsy alone with JB, who sniffs at his empty food and water bowls. For a moment, he’s tempted to call Harry on his bluff, see who will blink first, but the very thought of JB suffering because of their petty battle of wills has him sweeping up the bowls to replenish them.

It’s even hard to stay mad at Harry as he crouches down by JB and gives him tentative long strokes through his soft fur while JB inhales his kibble and messily laps at the water. He even acknowledges Eggsy’s gentle hand with a few head leans and contented snuffles before deciding he’s had enough and waddles to his favourite bed in the living room where Eggsy has so often spotted him.

“We wanted the same things,” Eggsy tells him. “Just wanted things to stay the same, right, boy?”

JB yawns, exposing all his white teeth, black gums, and long pink tongue before dropping his head to his paws and staring at Eggsy with his large, watery brown eyes that somehow always come across as mournful and wise.

Eggsy takes his long unblinking gaze as agreement.

 

_____

 

When Harry detaches himself from their cocoon of blankets where he still curls up around Eggsy as if to shield him from the rest of the world or possess him completely, Eggsy tracks his movements as per usual, from loo to wardrobe to dresser, back to the wardrobe again. All the scents that mark his progress into civility: shower gel, pomade, cologne, faint starch in his clothes. A slight dip in the mattress when Harry sits down to put on his dress socks. He cracks open an eye to watch the lean muscles of Harry’s back move beneath his crisp white shirt like the smooth rolling surface of the ocean. He’s just about to reach out and stroke Harry’s spine to entice him when Harry stands up and moves out of reach.

He listens to Harry potter about downstairs. The click of the hob, the opening of cupboards, the scrape of a dining room chair against the floor. JB’s nails tap across the wood, a constant high-frequency whine emerging from his throat, sometimes actually vocalised into a growl and a demanding bark, followed by the tinny shove of an empty food bowl being nudged.

“I’m sorry,” he hears Harry say to JB in a conciliatory tone, “but it’s not my responsibility to feed you. You’ll have to take the issue up with your master.”

Knows Eggsy can hear him perfectly, and this is all being done for Eggsy’s benefit.

Harry takes longer than usual to come back upstairs. He can hear the flap of a newspaper page occasionally being turned. JB is still whining. It all becomes _irritating_.

Finally, Eggsy sits up and glares at the bedroom door before throwing back the covers and making his way downstairs in a near stomp. The scene that greets him doesn’t improve his mood: Harry sitting at the table, casually perusing the newspaper, cup and saucer near at hand like some parody of domesticity were it not for the fact that JB is looking pitifully between him and his empty bowls and Eggsy is pretty sure the cup contains the dregs of warmed up blood, which is beyond absurd.

“You should feed your dog on a schedule.” It comes off as almost an absentminded suggestion. Eggsy can’t see Harry’s face behind the wall of the newspaper spread, but he imagines it looks very much like the one Harry frequently wears when he’s purposefully being a smartarse.

Eggsy doesn’t deign to respond as he refills JBs bowls, barely able to move out of the way fast enough before JB swoops in. By the time he’s put the kibble back into the cupboard, Harry’s washing out his dishes in the sink. “No more breakfast in bed?” he asks, knowing he’s being churlish, but unable to help himself because everything just feels _off_ today. Nothing is going how it’s supposed to.

“You’re a grown man,” _of sorts_ , Harry doesn’t say, but as always, it’s implied. “You can figure out how to feed yourself.”

It leaves Eggsy momentarily speechless as Harry shakes out the excess water from his now clean dishes and leaves them on the drying rack before turning to him and bracing a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve got to go. If you need to take JB out for walks, just let me know. About fifteen minutes warning should do. Otherwise, there’s the back garden.”

“Letting me out into the world, you sure it’s safe?” Eggsy asks, not with a little acid souring his words.

The look Harry gives him is equal parts patience, exasperation, and...ah, there. Guilt. “So long as the right precautions are taken, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Right. Eggsy will be carefully monitored by Kingsman staff with twitchy fingers on remotes that control his collar.

“But I do hope you go out. JB needs the exercise,” Harry adds before drawing Eggsy slightly forward to place a blood-warmed kiss on his forehead.

“I know what you’re doing,” Eggsy grumbles, still unable to help closing his eyes as everything becomes so much _more_ the instant Harry’s lips make contact with his skin. It makes him want to reach out and drag Harry in close, keep him there. Instead, he stubbornly clenches his fists at his sides.

Harry’s response is the verbal equivalent to a shrug. “Does it matter? An innocent creature’s life is in your hands.” He cups Eggsy’s scowling face. “I’ll see you tonight, darling.”

After he leaves and the sound of his footsteps disappear with the engine of the taxi, Eggsy feels strangely restless. He wants to go back to bed and sink back down into the unceasing stupour that had so perfectly swallowed up the majority of his existence these days, but every time he tries, his mind is inundated with thought and sensory input. It’s usually more quiet than this, and what noise emerges from the neighbours he’s learned to tune out.

JB, for such a small dog who remains wary of him at best, is incredibly noisy.

He snores when he sleeps. He snorts when he’s awake. He groans, he pants, he huffs, he farts, he licks at anything within reach that bears a memory of food. His nails are too long and constantly clatter against the wood. His bowels constantly gurgle. He barks at birds and people and shifting tree branches.

“Jesus, JB, give it a rest, will you?” Eggsy mutters and tries to block out the continuous sounds of this small creature in such close proximity to him by burying his face under a throw pillow, only to sigh when he hears JB scratch at the front door and whine. “Let me guess: you need walkies.”

It’s a keyword, no matter who it comes from. JB begins barking excitedly, dancing about as if he can’t contain his excitement.

“Fucking hell.” For a second, he’s tempted to simply let JB do his business in the back garden and call it a day, but it’s the immediate guilt that stops him. Just because he’s got to do the dramatic prisoner routine don’t mean JB ought to suffer alongside him. JB loves walks more than anything, Eggsy recalls. God, it feels like forever ago since the last time he stepped out with JB charging forward, tugging on his lead in eagerness. Since they last took a turn in the gardens.

With no small amount of reluctance, he phones Harry. “I want to take JB out for a walk,” he says before Harry can even finish his greeting. “Fifteen minutes, you said?”

There’s a long pause. Eggsy can hear the old antique clock in Arthur’s office ticking away. How does it not drive Harry mad? “Yes, I’ll see to it,” Harry finally says. There’s a note of relief in his tone. Eggsy tries not to be a shit about it by saying something mean. “Stay out for as long as you’d like.”

Instead, he settles for a quiet, “Thanks,” and hangs up before Harry has a chance to say anything else.

As soon as he lowers his mobile, however, Eggsy realises he has another problem: if he’s being given the privilege of leaving the house to walk amongst human beings, precautions or no, he’s got to eat.

Just as Harry intended.

It doesn’t mean Eggsy has to be graceful about it, grabbing blood from the refrigerator and slamming the door, drinking it straight from the bag cold, then gagging and grudgingly admitting no amount of surliness is worth suffering the wretched taste of cold blood.

But when he opens the front door and takes his first tentative step outside, lets the world overwhelm his senses with sounds, sights, and scents, JB straining at his lead, nails clawing against the cobbles, a weight he hadn’t known he’d been carrying falls away. He feels almost lightheaded with it, dizzy.

It’s overcast today, so Eggsy makes due with pulling up his hoodie over his head and tucking away overly sensitive skin and the gleam of his collar into the voluminous folds of his sweatshirt (but how big it’s got on him now). A few more steps further down the lane. He tries to imagine that he’s just another normal resident, taking his dog for a walk, same as before. Has it really been so long?

“Mr Unwin? Mr Unwin, is that you?”

Smell of gardenias, orange marmalade, old wool and lemon tea. Sugary sweet like treacle. A somewhat slower beating heart. Mrs Grant from three doors down. He turns up to where she’s opened her first story window to call down to him and dredges up ghost of a smile. “Good morning, Mrs Granby.”

Mrs Granby has a pleasant round face that always comes off as eternally maternal, and even Eggsy can’t remain wary around her. She’s one of the few neighbourhood residents who doesn’t look down on him every time he dares to step out of the house in Adidas. “I almost didn’t recognise you. You normally wear such a smart suit and are out the door much earlier than this. Though, come to think, I haven’t seen you around lately.”

He’s so used to lying that the words come easily, no hesitation. “No. I’ve been away for business longer than usual. And then I was...ill. I’m still recovering now, you see.”

“You do have a pallour,” Mrs Granby said with a note of concern. “And so thin too!”

Eggsy winces. “I’ve only just got my appetite back.”

“You poor dear. I hope that uncle of yours is taking care of you.”

At first, Eggsy is confused, and a question almost leaves his lips before he stops himself. To all his neighbours, Harry’s still considered dead. _Well, they wouldn’t be wrong._ The thought almost makes him laugh inappropriately. “He does his best.”

“I tell you, he almost gave me a fright the first time I saw him. Looks so much like his brother, they could be twins,” Mrs Granby says wistfully. Eggsy almost wants to ask after it, for up until now, he had the impression Harry had been a bit of a nuisance to his neighbours. “You resemble him very much as well.”

Shifting his weight from foot to foot, Eggsy suppresses grimace. “So I’m told.” Smile, small and contained. “Well Mrs Granby, I’m afraid JB’s gonna gnaw through his lead if I linger for a second more. Do have a good day.” He gives her a dismissive wave and hurries on before she has a chance to ply him with any more questions.

He’s so focused on putting as much distance between himself and nosy neighbours as he can, overtaking and dragging poor JB behind him, that he almost walks right out into oncoming traffic, stopped only at the last second by a blaring horn.

It’s deafening, the loudest thing he can imagine, and he almost wants to run after that wretched car, rip through metal and then tear apart its driver—

Eggsy breathes. Exhaust. Rubbish. Urine. Flora from the flower shop. Pastries next door. Old books, newspaper. Spilt beer on the pub floor. Sweat. Body odour. 

There are so many more people about today, wearing shorts, dresses without stockings, and sleeveless tops, sandals. With a start, Eggsy realises it’s late summer and he hadn’t even bloody noticed. Didn’t even feel a thing.

He must make a sight, every inch of skin covered up in clothes that ought to be sweltering. No wonder Harry always looked the part of unruffled, besuited gentleman at all times and in all situations, making it look as effortless as breathing and inadvertently making Eggsy feel like a failure for struggling to achieve even a sliver of his elegance. Turns out, Harry never had to contend with environmental discomforts like temperature. But then, he’s starting to learn Harry is full of shit a lot of the time.

Girding himself like he’s about to march into battle, Eggsy tugs JB in the direction of the gardens. He tries to keep his senses attuned for tails, and when he fails to pick up on any, figures he’s being watched by other means. Still, a part of him relaxes. If he tries, he can almost pretend it’s normal.

That he’s normal.

At least JB’s natural curiosity and excitement at being able to sort through so many vibrant urban scents comes back in full force, and soon it’s him dragging Eggsy along the paths of the garden, stopping every few inches in order to sniff out something apparently new and endlessly fascinating.

Eggsy doesn’t mind, though. Before, he never had the time to let JB dally for long, urging him to quickly finish up his business so they could get on with it. Now, Eggsy isn’t in any rush. The longer outdoors, the better, really. So he indulges JB’s every whim, lets him create a meandering journey that occasionally leads off the cobbles and into the flowerbeds themselves.

And if people think he’s some creep all bundled up and hiding in the bushes...well, there are worse things to be for the likes of him.

 

_____

 

The sight of JB curled up in his bed inside the master bedroom is one that Eggsy pretends to be indifferent to, even as he’s quietly pleased. No, _relieved_. They are not quite back to the place where JB regularly tries to jump up on the bed and spread himself across Eggsy’s lap, but JB at least tolerates him now. Then again, JB’s always been a bit clever, knowing not to bite the hand that feeds him.

When Harry comes home late, Eggsy resumes his usual catalogue of Harry’s movements throughout the house. For all that Harry hates to be boring, he’s terribly habitual, brolly carefully set in its holder, shedding his coat and dutifully hanging it up. A careful perusal of the house to make sure all exits and entrances are secured.

By the time Harry makes his way upstairs and murmurs a greeting to JB in that ridiculous syrupy voice everyone adopts when speaking to small animals, Eggsy has buried himself in some stupid game on his phone. It’s doesn’t fool Harry at all.

“Smug’s not a good look on you,” Eggsy mutters, not even bothering to look up.

“I’ve no idea what you mean,” Harry coolly responds.

In fact, he’s determined to pay Harry absolutely no mind at all, a resolution he immediately breaks when he finds himself going through the motions of Harry’s evening routine along with him: a careful divestment of Harry’s armour, from holsters and weapons locked in the hidden wall safe in the office to tie pulled loose to dress shirt unbuttoned and tossed into the hamper. Eggsy sneaks glances over the rim of his phone, soaking up the tease of gradually revealed flesh, feeling something perfectly purely primitive blossom in the core of his belly.

He doesn’t remember wanting, no, _needing_ , Harry this intensely when he’d been human. The lust had been there at first sight, sure, swiftly followed by a puppyish crush and hero worship, and roundly cemented by tragic almost loss into something like romanticised love that maybe had only a little to do with Harry himself, now that he’s got more distance on the matter.

Now, though, when Eggsy doesn’t distract himself, if he just lets himself be consumed by the sheer presence of Harry, he feels gutted by the need to drink up every last drop of blood that circulates through Harry’s shrunken veins, to climb inside him, to let Harry do the exact same, until they’ve fully consumed each other in some fucking mad ouroboros of self-destruction. Like every last drop of blood _in him_ wants to return back from whence it sprung. Everybody just wants to go home after all.

Clad in those absurdly prim off-white Kingsman-issued pyjamas he frequently insists on wearing to bed, Harry climbs in beside him and curls his arms and practically his entire body around Eggsy like a ship docking at port, and already Eggsy feels something tense that had been strung throughout his body ease into that safe harbour. Harry isn’t all that warm, but he’s solid and there’s the fucked up, other-worldly connection between them and so Eggsy abandons his phone in favour of pressing himself against Harry despite of how furious he still is at Harry’s bloody high handedness and...and so many other unnamed things. Eggsy tried denying himself this once, mostly out of self-loathing, and it was fucking awful, so the least Harry can do now is provide cuddles on demand, regardless of how much Eggsy looks at him like he wants to kill him.

The light is still on. Harry’s face is always so much softer without his glasses. Softer lines, brighter eyes. Almost heart-breakingly human. The incandescent light lends a sheen of warmth to his cool skin.

“How was it?” Harry asks softly.

Eggsy remembers that extra microsecond of terror before he stepped across the threshold of the front door, briefly paralysed by the fear that Merlin hadn’t turned off the collar, that he’d feel the sharp, agonising pain lancing through his neck like a bullet. “Unnerving,” Eggsy says. “But then it was good.”

The feeling of being alone in a city is not an unfamiliar one to him. Back in the days when he’d do anything to avoid returning to his flat on the estate, he’d spend whole afternoons and most nights walking the streets, surrounded by people, and yet feeling so very apart from them. Their troubles weren’t his troubles. They didn’t know what he’d gone through. They didn’t know _him_. Sneered at him and looked down their noses at him, but also couldn’t see his shame and restless anger.

It was at once both immensely comforting and terribly lonely.

At the time, of course, it had been early parental loss, poverty, and casually dealt violence and cruelty that had built that invisible barrier between him and the world. These days, he couldn’t even claim the same race.

“I’m glad.” Harry smiles at him, soft as his voice and no traces of smugness to be found. 

Unfair, really. Eggsy gravitates towards sincerity like a moth to a flame. He presses himself impossibly more until his cheek rests against Harry’s silent chest, but finds their same old song anyway, letting it lull him back into another pocket of refuge for the night.

 

_____

 

Eggsy doesn’t think he has an addictive personality, not really. Not like how Merlin once described Harry’s proclivities for alcohol when he could still benefit from it or his penchant for peacocking when and where he could. But when he stumbles across something precious and rare, he tends to hold onto it with the desperation of a man hanging off the edge of a cliff by his fingernails. Hoards it away, keeps it secret.

And he’s self-aware enough to understand that that’s what these jaunts outside become: precious, endangered moments. Not as secret as he would have liked, given that he’ll never not be monitored, his exact location and action scrutinised for threat, but they can’t know what he thinks and feels, what it means to slide past people in the pavement, to make the choice to look them in the eye. (He never does.)

They can’t know how the city smells to him, how ancient and, at times, rank, from the curry shops in Soho to sweating tourists in Picadilly to the artificial scents of Lush on Oxford, the sour scents of rubbish bags lining the streets for pickup, the thin skin of algae growing atop parts of the Serpentine. They can’t know how he hears it: cacophonous, from the somber bongs of Big Ben skating off every surface of the city, seemingly magnified to infinity in his ears and noon is a bloody migraine lying in wait because of it to the constant rush of sewage through the embankments, the clop of the horse guards parade and the impatient moanings of all the cars unfortunate enough to be trapped behind it, the hundreds upon thousands of mundane and vital conversations that happen within his vicinity, which, to him, sometimes feels like everything within the M25.

How he can know this world better than any of them, and can never know it, and neither they him.

Strolls slowly become a list of places to avoid as JB proceeds to forget every ounce of Eggsy’s hard-fought training and becomes a little monster once more, barking and pulling on his lead every time he spots a squirrel in St James’s Park, trying to rip open bin bags outside every restaurant to get at the tantalising rotting food within, winding the lead around Eggsy’s and everyone else’s legs when he abruptly veers in sharp directions, chasing after some scent or sound that captures his attention.

This fucking dog.

He settles for taking JB to a booshie dog park in hopes of exorcising the seeming demonic entity that’s taken possession of him but finds the whole thing exasperating, being made to sit and wait while JB tries to dominate all the other dogs in the park, regardless of their size or sharp teeth. A bulldog in spirit if not exactly body.

“I think all the other dogs are afraid of yours.”

Eggsy turns his head to find a woman about his own age sitting on the other end of the bench. Middle class accent. Passion fruit tea and some artificial strawberry body spray. Light brown hair. Hazel eyes. Plush lips. Smattering of freckles. That sort of soft beauty that seems delicate and ephemeral. Dressed in some sort of high end athletic wear no one actually works out in. He’d only been peripherally aware of her presence as much as he was of any human these days, but rare it was that any of them sought to interact with him, covered nearly head to toe in the heat, a scowl permanently carved into his features.

As if in contrast to his forbidding expression, she smiles at him. “The pug, right?”

If he could still blush, he imagines his ears would have gone bright red by now. “Yeah. JB. His name. Uh...sorry about that. We can leave.”

But the girl just laughs and shakes her head. “No, that’s alright. He doesn’t seem to be doing much more than barking up a storm. Mine’s the husky over there, Lila.”

Eggsy follows the nod of her chin to an equally blue-eyed husky with patches of light grey on her snow white fur, currently being cowed into reluctant submission by JB, a sight made somewhat comical by the fact Lila was easily three times his size.

“Sorry,” Eggsy says again, grimacing. How to explain his elite-trained dog was undergoing a personal crisis where his beloved master was now an unrecognisable mythical blood-sucking creature? “JB’s....readjusting.”

“I haven’t seen you round before,” the girl says, pausing only a moment before jutting out her hand. “I’m Charlotte.”

Eggsy hesitates before taking it, his own mostly wrapped in the overlong sleeves of his hoodie. “Eg—Gary.”

“Eggary?” Charlotte looks like she wants to hold back a laugh.

“ _Gary_. It is my real name,” he hastens to assure, “just haven’t had to use it in...awhile.”

“Alright, Gary,” Charlotte agrees, still smiling, eyes bright and mouth wide. Genuine.

She’s so awfully accepting of the entire strange scenario, from his dress to his dog to his manner, it bewilders him for an entire ten seconds before it hits him.

Dilated pupils. Faster beating heart. The subtle pungency of chemistry in her blood. Slight lean in her frame towards him. _Attraction_.

That nearly invisible pull between two humans. He forgot what it was like. It doesn’t seem like something she ought to have for something like him. He who ought to inspire, if anything, a sense of danger, but oft he’s been told that sometimes the line between the two is thin.

More out of curiosity than reciprocity, he leans slightly towards her and breathes in. Beneath all the artificial scents she’s doused herself in, he can smell what is really her: blood, rich and thick, more enticing than anything else she could spray across her skin.

Suddenly, he understands what _attraction_ means as his mouth floods with saliva and he feels his teeth lengthen, his stomach ache in roaring emptiness, his throat dry with sheer, burning _want_.

Devolving thought bounds in on the heels of that desire. He could have it. All of it. It would be so easy. He’s stronger. Faster. He’s a predator. She’s too naive not to heed the warning signs. Let that be a lesson. Bet he could before Merlin even understands what’s happening. Merlin, so fucking useless, thinking he’s better than him. Thinking he can stop him. He would destroy them all. He would—

He stands up, perhaps suspiciously too fast, but in the screeching panic that overwhelms all other thoughts in his brain with the force of a runaway freight train, he neither cares nor notices. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Gary, what...?”

“I can’t. Sorry.” He hops right over the fence and sweeps up JB, gripping him tightly despite his struggles to wriggle free.

All but flat out runs away from the park and Charlotte. Doesn’t look back.

Charlotte doesn’t call after him, even if he can feel her incredulous stare on him until he disappears round the corner. Perhaps common sense finally caught up with her after all. She’ll never know how close she was to danger.

How close _he_ was to doing something irreversible.

 

_____

 

It’s like once he opened the door, he can’t shut it again. All those thoughts, instincts, wants. They stay with him like a lingering bad taste and leave a churning restlessness in his limbs that has him pacing through the house like a caged animal.

That’s what he is, isn’t he? An animal with a thin veneer of humanity. The slightest slip and he almost loses all control. How the fuck had Harry done it?

He knows his distraction is giving Harry cause for concern when he comes home, barely acknowledging Harry’s greeting and pleasantries before climbing the stairs and crawling into bed like he could sleep for a century and wake up when this is all over. Harry doesn’t push, or rather, he’s learned not to. Try as Eggsy might to bury himself into an unthinking stupour, he nevertheless follows all the sounds Harry makes downstairs. He can’t not. Maybe he’s become a creature of habit too.

And when Harry finally retires to the bedroom later than usual and burrows in next to Eggsy, long limbs encircling him like a harness, Eggsy closes his eyes, tries to calm his mind, and let go. It’s there, almost at the edges of his mind, that siren call, promising the closest approximation to true rest as he will ever get these days, but at the last second, he pulls sharply away and sits up.

“What are you doing?” Harry asks as he watches Eggsy shrug on his hoodie and pull on his trainers.

“I wanna walk JB.”

“Now?” He can practically hear Harry’s frown. “In the middle of the night?”

“I’m thinking about changing my schedule up. Being out at night’s safer anyway, wouldn’t you say?”

Harry just returns his stare with a neutral expression. His hair’s long since fallen out of its styling, now lying in soft waves which, by morning, would have transformed into gravity-defying curls. Maybe it’s unfair of Eggsy to throw out that argument when it really can’t be refuted.

“It’s fine, innit?” Eggsy continues, makes it sound like a challenge. “You’ll let me out?”

He half expects Harry to say no, and certainly not the, “Can I come with you?” he gets instead.

“What, to monitor me?”

“If you don’t want me to come, I won’t. You can still go either way.”

Eggsy bites his lower lip, just hard enough to hurt. Finally, he concedes. “Alright.”

So Eggsy rouses a sleepy JB, who immediately launches from zero to sixty as soon as Eggsy says the magic word. They step out together beneath the solemn evening that settles over London. The streets and pavement are almost entirely empty. Storefronts shuttered and darkened. Lights across all the signs gone out and replaced by the single pinpoints of incandescence outside people’s homes. It’s nice. It feels like this world is just for them.

Overhead, the sky is unusually free of cloud cover as it has been all day, and the moon shines down, half swelled with silver, glazing the city landscape with its cool lacquer. It is especially becoming to Harry’s pale skin, painting him as some elegant vespertine creature moving languidly beside him.

They haven’t spoken since stepping out of the house, and the growing length of silence only becomes expectant by degrees until Eggsy can’t be certain who will break it first. Harry can sometimes be patient if it’s strategic.

“How’s work?” Eggsy asks more out of a need to get on with it than out of any real desire to know.

“Mostly the same,” Harry answers. “Reports to read. Budgets to approve. Not very exciting on this side of the desk, I’m afraid.”

Eggsy forgets sometimes that Harry doesn’t hold field agent status anymore. It still doesn’t quite compute: Harry the pen pusher. Harry the bureaucrat. It’s a far cry from the man (never a man though) who took pleasure in trouncing a gang in a pub and woke up from a four-month coma only to resume his mission the very same week. Probably still would have had his preferred career if Eggsy hadn’t come along and messed it all up, _this is why we can’t have nice things_ and all that.

“The recruits?”

Harry is visibly a bit more cautious about his answer. “...down to six now.”

“Parachute test up next?” 

“Actually, they’ve just had it. It’s a good group this round. The trials may go on for longer than anticipated. That hasn’t happened since….”

When Harry doesn’t finish and gives him another wary look, Eggsy fills in the blanks. Not since his father and James Spencer.

“Should send home anyone who shoots their dogs for a change,” Eggsy mutters, and that’s the decided end of that line of conversation.

After another five minutes of tense silence spent circling a long line of pristine white Kensington homes, JB stopping to sniff at every lamp post and corner, Harry finally comes out with it. “Are you alright?”

Eggsy watches JB carefully take in the numerous layers of canine urine marking a wrought iron fence post with single-minded intensity before finally meeting his concerned gaze. “Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Forever?”

“Nothing is forever, except maybe us. It may not feel like it now, but forever will take on a different meaning as the years pass.”

And there’s a thought. For the longest time since he joined Kingsman, Eggsy assumed the end of his life would probably come in the field. Some sort of violent but hopefully heroic ending. Now the future lies before them, seemingly infinite and unknown.

“Already, I feel my time at Kingsman is soon coming to an end,” Harry goes on as Eggsy gives a little tug to JB’s lead to have them resume their walk. And off Eggsy’s alarmed look, he adds, “I knew it had to happen some time. There’s only so many years I can use the excuse of having uncommonly youthful genetics to explain a rather unchanging appearance.”

It’s something Eggsy hasn’t considered, what with all the other new challenges his existence had presented him. Never being able to stay for too long in any one place. Never being able to hold onto people for long. Even his own family. He’d have to let them go at some point. He’ll never get to see Daisy grow up. His mum will have to experience another loss when the first one nearly destroyed her. How can he do that to them? “And then what? Merlin puts a collar on you too? We become cellmates again in your house?” With both of them fully conscious and aware, they’d drive each other mad. “What happens to us when Merlin dies? Doubt he’s going to just suddenly forget about us. Doesn’t like to leave loose ends as it is.”

“I always thought it rather romantic to unexpectedly and completely vanish when I needed to,” Harry muses. “The look on Merlin’s face alone would be worth the doing.”

“ _That’s_ the plan,” Eggsy says incredulously. “Fuck off and leave?”

“This was when I had no attachments in my life, Eggsy. No loved ones left. It made things rather simple for when I would have to take my last bow, so to speak.” There’s a touch of regret in Harry’s eyes as he speaks. Eggsy wonders how much of it is over him. “Now...now we’ll do whatever you want.”

In his shock, Eggsy’s steps falter until he manages to right himself and stop altogether. “What?”

Harry just looks at him like he hadn’t said anything extraordinary at all. “I will do anything you wish, Eggsy. Anything at all. I owe it to you for what I’ve done.”

“I don’t...I don’t want to feel like a constant _obligation_ ,” Eggsy stutters. “Like some walking reminder of all your sins.”

“And yet, we can’t change what we are,” Harry says simply. “But Eggsy, I’m fortunate that in the time I have known you, you have become so much more than that. You’re now...everything I would wish to live for. I _want_ what pleases you. It would bring me no greater happiness to see you happy in so much as we can have that now.” And on the lamplight-studded street, Harry’s gaze takes on that intensity that never fails to leave Eggsy rooted to the spot, cold and hot all over. “Have I ever told you how much I love you? How much I wish to devote my life to you? Completely and wholly, darling. I am yours. Everything I have and am. It’s yours.”

Funny how after all this time, the way they’ve shared each other’s bodies and blood and lives, not once had Harry ever said he actually _loved_ him. In fact, Eggsy didn’t think Harry was one to make such dramatic declarations of any sort, much less now, much less to _him_. It’s utterly frightening, wonderful and awful. A burden and a delight beyond measure. He used to dream of this very moment (secretly, only in the deepest recesses of his fantasies upon which reality need not have any bearing), only now that it has come true, he's far too experienced by now in what it actually means: a truly terrible responsibility, being the recipient of Harry’s affection.

“I...Jesus, Harry. You can’t just say things like that,” Eggsy croaks before jamming his hands into his pockets, somewhat mortified at both the entire situation and his own inept response. If his heart still beat, he thinks it’d probably be bounding out of his chest by now. “I...I don’t know what I wanna do. Have to have a think on it.”

 _I think I love you too_ , is what he really ought to say. No, he _knows_ he does. One doesn’t mourn like a grieving widow for months on end like that for a mere friend or passing acquaintance. One shouldn’t want to still be with someone after they’ve killed you. One cannot be this angry at someone one doesn’t love just as intensely.

Harry just smiles, impossibly tender so as to be barely there, corners of his eyes crinkling. “Well. If there’s anything we have now, it’s time.”

 

_____

 

After that, Eggsy thinks, somehow, they’ve bought a moment of refuge for themselves. They’ve reached an agreement at least: come what may, they at least knew they would face it together. That would never be in question, even if everything else should remain perilous and unknown. It settles the unnamed raging creature in his heart, at least for the moment. But Eggsy knows he can only survive this life now but in _moments_.

Stupid of him, in retrospect.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bet you never thought you'd see this bad penny turn up again!
> 
> Warnings for the usual blood and gore, dodgy science, plus a suicide attempt.
> 
> There are probably a million typos, etc. here. I'll get around to fixing them at some point.

He’s an immensely selfish creature. Harry knows this about himself. In the past, he has deluded himself into thinking otherwise. Convincing himself that while his actions may have had an incidental element of self serving, they ultimately benefited others much more. Justifications upon justifications, made easier by virtue of his chosen career, which had practically branded in its agents the noble ideas of _for the good of the many_ and _duty above self_. There was an element of truth to it all; it only served to prolong his illusions.

Every morning, he rises to awareness with the smugly comforting solidity of Eggsy in his arms, some gaping absence that had previously existed in his life now so wholly filled, he cannot possibly imagine ever being without it again. The way Eggsy smells (like a part of him), feels (as warm as him, which is to say, not very), and sounds (him, him, him). Eggsy’s nose brushing against his throat, lips to his collarbone, hands folded against Harry’s chest like a prayer. He greets each day with this grounding reality: he is not alone, not anymore. Not ever again.

(The horrible soul-consuming guilt over what he’s taken from Eggsy to achieve this final sense of peace doesn’t ever go away, of course. Only increases as full awareness steadily ticks by. But for the first few, half-realised moments of each day where thoughts await to be fully formed and consciousness rises to the surface, Harry is, perhaps, _happy_.)

But it’s what allows him to leave their bed and go about getting ready for the day, a day spent away from Eggsy, being in the very place from which Eggsy has been exiled, dealing in matters that had once very much been a significant part of Eggsy’s life and identity. It’s what allows him to remain unflinching beneath the weight of Eggsy’s constant, dare he think _accusing_ , attention that follows him from bed to loo to wardrobe, 

But Eggsy is doing better these days since he shifted his entire schedule to openly roam the streets at night. Or at least, that simmering resentment and restlessness that curdled beneath his skin for so long is now absent. Resignation, maybe. Harry desperately, perhaps naively, wants to call it acceptance. When Harry reluctantly leaves the bed now in the morning, Eggsy is soon to follow him downstairs. They take breakfast together at the dining room table. Make pleasant small talk, like an old married couple.

“Oughta to start packing your lunches now,” Eggsy jokes, smile like the pleasant curl of a ribbon. “Leave filthy notes in ‘em too.”

He kisses Harry goodbye before Harry leaves. His smile even lights up his eyes, just a little.

 _What’s a few more years of this?_ Harry wants to tell him. A few more years in the grand scheme of things. A lifetime. An eternity. Worse comes to worst, they can always leave it all behind. They will. Just the two of them.

On his way to work, during the long, tedious morning hours of going through reports and proposals, Harry lets his mind wander a bit more than it should. He thinks about all the places Eggsy still has not been, even in his travels for Kingsman, a whole host of opportunities and experiences tragically cut short. He’ll make it up to Eggsy though. He’ll take him everywhere. No city, country, or continent left unexplored. They can access places not even humans can reach. Mount Everest. The frosty expanse of Antarctica in deepest winter. The Red Zones of France if Eggsy were so inclined to learn more about history. There’s a whole world out there waiting for them. Just a few more years, and they can go and never look back.

He calls Eggsy around noon.

“Hello, Harry. I’m _fine_.” Eggsy’s voice holds a hint of exasperation and none of its prior apathy and anger.

“I know,” Harry says indulgently. “But consider this: I call because I miss you. I want to hear your voice.”

“I miss you too,” Eggsy says, voice softened by the simple admission. “Always.”

It warms Harry up almost as well as a meal, makes him smile even though no one can see it. “What have you been up to?”

“Just looking through your porn collection.”

He’s taken so off-guard, he actually sputters. “What? I don’t have a porn collection!”

Eggsy snorts. “Them old books full of old timey nude drawings says otherwise.”

“That’s not porn, Eggsy. It’s erotic art. There’s a difference.” And it’s a small collection of invaluable art amidst a much larger, unsexual one at that. But already, Harry knows this is going to be a losing battle.

“Yeah, alright, Harry. If you say so. A very posh porn collection then.”

“Are you done?”

“Was getting close before you called,” Eggsy says a little breathily.

It takes a few moments for Harry to understand what Eggsy means, and when he does, he scowls. “If you make a mess of my priceless antique—”

He hears Eggsy laugh. “Nah, I’m just messing with you. I’m not gonna wank off to your weird old porno books. I’m not that depraved yet.”

Harry doesn’t know whether to be relieved or offended. What he does fervently wish, though, is to see Eggsy’s face carved into mischievous lines and impish mirth. It’s been a long time since he heard that unfettered laugh.

Harry pitches his voice low, maybe not so much seductive as hopeful. “Shall I come home early tonight?”

“If you want.” It’s spoken with lackadaisical indifference just before he ends the call without saying anything further, but Harry can hear the hint of anticipatory challenge on the back end that no human ear could ever discern.

It makes Harry smirk. Merlin frequently tells him smug isn’t a good look on him, but it’s never done Harry any damage. Suddenly the hours between now and the end of the day seem interminable, the ever-replenishing list of bureaucracy to mine or tiptoe around tedious, and so, Harry’s thoughts resume their saunter to more pleasantly distracting pastures.

Eggsy will want to keep track of his family, of course. They can do that, even from afar. If they’re careful. Harry has taken so much from Eggsy, he won’t take this away too. Make sure Daisy earns a place at any university of her choice, fully paid for, with plenty left over on which to live comfortably during and forever after. That Michelle, whose life has been filled with more than enough loss for several lifetimes, can at least live for want of nothing. Maybe Eggsy can give her some sign that he’s alive and safe, if not exactly exuberantly happy. That would surely ease her mind from its worst imaginings, however justified they may be. They’ll have to be random about it. No patterns. Nothing prolonged. Nothing from which Merlin can identify and trace back. Difficult, but not impossible.

And in time, any knowledge of them and what they are would eventually fade away, nothing more than myth and hazy recollections at best, paranoia at worst. Without hard, undeniable proof, not even Merlin, in all his eminent rationality, could turn those tides.

They would be free, after that. Truly free.

Before, Harry had just wanted to get by.

Now, he wants to _live_.

It is in the firm grasp of such newly realised conviction that the alert comes.

 

_____

 

The knock at the door is so strange and unexpected that Eggsy freezes, mind going blank, unsure of what to do next. The pattern of his days, largely uneventful now that his world has become quite small again, the majority of them in solitude, have become so natural that this sudden deviation is like someone upending the rules of gravity.

He stares at the door like its very existence is bewildering. Anyone who has any sort of benign business with either Harry or him would never bother to knock because they would have never bother to pop by in the first place. And if it weren’t benign, would they really be politely knocking?

Neither he nor Harry really have any friends. Not anymore, at least.

It’s in the midst of JB’s flurry of barks that Eggsy extends his less human senses outward to capture the steady percussion of a slow and steady heartbeat, inhaling the scent of floral and some sort of off-puttingly well done meaty dish and... _oh_. It’s Mrs Granby.

The patient knock comes again, which only seems to increase the pitch and frequency of JB’s barking. “Alright, alright. Give it a rest, will you?” But of course, all of JB’s attention is honed in on the door as if it’s personally offended him.

Eggsy tries to adopt an appearance that is assuredly normal, even if he’s not really sure what that means anymore, and the fact that he’s suddenly worried, no, _terrified_ , that he won’t be is concerning in and of itself. But it’s not like having a meaningless little conversation with his neighbour on the street where the means of a quick escape are numerous. It’s his home she’s now intruding upon. His cage. His territory. A lion’s den.

He tries to curb JB’s fury by nudging him away with an outstretched foot, and JB’s still wary enough of him that he backs away. Door and its immediate vicinity cleared of outsizedly unruly small dogs, he opens it, his most charming smile pasted on his face. “Mrs Granby!”

“Hello Eggsy, dear,” says Mrs Granby, holding the dish up like supplication. “I’m sorry for dropping in unannounced, but I just wanted to drop off this kidney pie I baked earlier today. I know you’re still recovering from illness. This should help get some more meat on those bones of yours.”

Up close, the dish smells greasy and heavy. Eggsy accepts the still-warm dish reluctantly and is perhaps a touch too slow to respond. “Oh, that’s…that’s very kind of you to go through all the trouble. Thank you.” In a way, it’s a relief: he can focus on its noxious scent so he doesn’t have to smell the far sweeter blood flowing beneath Mrs Granby’s thin skin.

“Think nothing of it,” Mrs Granby replies warmly as she reaches out to squeeze Eggsy’s stiff shoulder that Eggsy barely manages to refrain flinching away from. “Though maybe you and your uncle could pop by some time for tea. Introduce us properly?”

“I’ll let him know,” Eggsy lies.

There’s a drawn out moment of silence where the mood shifts from pleasantries to awkwardness. Mrs Granby visibly straightens and seems to recollect her wits. “Well. I won’t take up any more of your time. Do let me know if you like the pie. It feels good to cook for someone again! Have a good day, Eggsy. I shall look forward to seeing you again soon.”

“Of course. Have a good day, Mrs Granby.”

Mrs Granby turns and starts away. For all intents and purposes, that ought to be it.

Except Eggsy finds himself unable to immediately turn away and close the door to shut out the world again, instead watching his neighbour’s short journey back down to her own home with a pleased lope in her step as if she were proud of herself for having done a good deed.

It _was_ a good deed, though, caring for one’s recovering neighbour, however unnecessary it would turn out ot be. One that no one else in the mews bothered to do, fortunately. Still. Mrs Granby is a good person, Eggsy realises. A genuinely kind woman, in a way that is rare to come across these days. He’s been so afraid of humans lately, either what they could do to him or he them, that he’s forgotten the intricacies and wonders of an authentic interaction with one.

He’s so lost in savouring the pleasantly warm feeling that’s bloomed in his chest, that he almost doesn’t register the stout furry body that darts past his legs and out the door, dashing down the lane towards the main road, dark brown ears fluttering like sails of freedom. “Are you fucking kidding...JB! What the fuck are you doing? JB, get back here!”

JB, that little fucker, doesn’t even pause.

Panicked at the thought of what urban horrors could befall any small, vulnerable creature with more aggression than sense, Eggsy starts out the door himself with the single minded determination to rein in his unruly dog and—

—He’s no sooner than three steps out before it feels like he’s been shot in the back of the neck. One sharp flash of fire and everything goes white—

—Distantly, he hears something shattering. The smell of overcooked meat floods his senses like cooking grease.

“Eggsy!”

The world turns sickeningly.

Or maybe it’s him, rushing up to the cobbles littered with kidney pie and glass. A hard impact with the ground that he can’t feel until his skull rebounds off the stone with a dull thud.

Mrs Granby appears, pale as a sheet. Her mouth open and saying words he can’t parse. He wants to reassure her, reach out and stop her fretting hands from touching him, but he can’t move. Can’t feel his body anymore. Can’t feel _anything_.

Like being back down in that basement, endless. Everything white. Can’t move or breathe or think, painfully exposed. Helpless. His body its own coffin. And, oh God, he’s already dead but he still fears _dying_. Ceasing to be. Losing the chance. The choice. Can’t even fight or claw at it, can’t even—

He’s dying, this is truly it, himself, shrinking until he disappears. This is it, this is it, this is it—

Harry hovers over him, grim. “Eggsy.”

Eggsy gasps. Hates how the terror blackening the edges of his vision begins to lessen just a little. Can breathe again even when he doesn’t need it, but.

“It’ll be alright. You’ll be fine.”

It’s not the first time Harry’s lied to him. It’ll hardly be the last.

 

_____

 

The air still feels like it’s pulsing in a way Harry’s heart cannot. Permeated with receding adrenaline, a fading, ringing echo that tastes sour with fear and tension.

There’s a kind of wiry alertness grating through his veins now, sharp and jagged. The whole world feels like it’s flickering, the frames per second moving too slowly. He wants to crawl out of his skin or maybe divest someone else of theirs.

Harry doesn’t even wait until the recording has played all the way through before he’s issuing the order. “Go back to the beginning and play it through again.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the way Merlin’s jaw ticks, the only betrayal of his growing frustration, but it’s a testament to the steely command in Harry’s voice that he does what he’s told without comment.

The cameras in Harry’s house have top of the line, high-definition image quality, made from image technology that will hit the markets in ten years, but even still, there’s an air of incredulity in the image it presents: narrow, constrained, and distant in its uncaring gaze of the world it captures. This one in particular covers the stretch of the entryway and front door, the front door only barely in frame. But it’s enough. It’s too much.

The frames skip and jump as Merlin drags the player back to the beginning of the timeline’s recording. Eggsy goes in and out of frame until—

_“Alright, alright,” Eggsy’s voice says off screen. “Give it a rest, will you?”_

The scene goes on, from the time Eggsy opens the door until the time he steps through it and collapses like a lifeless doll—

“Stop,” Harry says.

The video freezes. Mrs Granby’s shrill cries still ring in his ears.

“Go back to the beginning.”

“Harry,” Merlin sighs. “There’s nothing more to be learned from this. Your neighbour’s memories have been taken care of. We’ve assured there were no other witnesses. It was a quiet part of the day. Most people weren’t home. All told, it could have been far worse.”

“And JB?” Harry says, still staring at the screen.

Merlin hesitates. “We’re still working on locating him. That wily bastard’s fast and too small to be seen on most of the cameras.”

“Then what did I miss?”

“Harry.”

“There has to be something I missed,” Harry says, finally turning away from the screen, even though the images feel burned into his mind. “For such a _stupid_ accident. Why didn’t I see it coming? We have neighbours. We still live among _humans_.”

“As you say, it was a stupid accident.” At least Merlin doesn’t say, _I told you so_. Not that Merlin looks any happier for it. There is a lot of self blame there too, Harry knows, only in his current state, he doesn’t feel like it’s nearly enough. “I don’t think any of us could have foreseen getting outwitted by a fucking dog.”

“And what does that say about us?” Harry sneers.

“Go home, Harry,” Merlin says tiredly, rubbing a hand across his face and dislodging his glasses in the process. “There’s nothing you can do here except be a nuisance.”

“There’s nothing I can do at home either,” Harry admits, feeling lost. “He doesn’t wish to see me.”

Merlin is hardly surprised. “Yes, well. Short of bringing Eggsy back to the mansion—” 

“No.”

“—he still needs to eat and heal. Handle it.” _Like the goddamned adult you are_ , Merlin’s gaze adds what his mouth does not.

Harry tilts his head, assessing, unable to shake off his suspicion. “You won’t demand Eggsy return under lock and key here?”

“Why should I?” Merlin raises his brows. “If anything, this incident goes to show how well the system works.”

“Yes, you’ve truly made sure Eggsy knows his place now,” Harry says, unable to keep the bitterness from seeping into his tone.

“As you say,” Merlin says slowly, gaze going dark and flat, voiced pitched to something low and dangerous, one last warning. “I’m not the one who wanted him to live amongst humans.”

As opposed to locking him up like an animal, Harry wants to snarl. Let all his pent up rage consume him and finally show Merlin what he’s never had control of all along—

And to prove Merlin’s very point, in the end.

Harry shoulders sag. It becomes too heavy to hold them up anymore.“I wanted to give him some semblance of a life after taking it away, over and over again.” Ironies of ironies. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for him.”

When it is clear Harry isn’t going to fight him any longer, Merlin sinks back in his chair. The hours of lack of sleep catch up with him in tired, drawn lines. Not enough, however, to favour Harry with a deadpan look. “Maybe you ought to really stop trying.”

Harry laughs mirthlessly. “It seems I’m better at giving lessons than learning them.”

“Don’t I know it.”

 

_____

 

Harry opts for a taxi home, using the delay caused by knots of traffic to brace himself. Outside, he can almost remember running through these streets not so long ago, faster than he’s ever run in his life, or after it. He was fast, faster than a human could be, and nimble, twisting around pedestrians and dodging cars at intersections without missing a beat. He thought he could feel his heart race, but it must have been his heels slapping across the pavement, the urgency driving him on.

Because Eggsy had needed him. Eggsy had been in trouble.

The taxi pulls to the kerb just outside the mews, and it’s too easy to envision what had been there last time, greeting him as he rounded the corner to a scene that didn’t make sense. But Harry is trained to triage any situation and the decisions had turned into actions before he could consciously process them.

_Mrs Granby had looked up at him in shock. “Oh! Mr Hart—” and promptly fell over with a small dart lodged in her neck._

_He had cast his senses about but couldn’t pick up on anyone else in the immediate vicinity, no one paying attention, just the smell of burning sun without a lick of cloud cover and the savoury earthy scent of cooked meat spoiled across the ground._

_Eggsy had looked up at him with too many emotions, but mostly fear, as Harry scooped up his limp body and carried him inside. His head had lulled into Harry’s chest, almost unnaturally. He hadn’t made a sound._

_“It’ll be alright,” Harry had said aloud, hugging Eggsy’s precious unresponsive body tighter to his own. “You’ll be fine.”_

Harry blinks, only realising they had been idling for some time now. “Thank you, David,” he belatedly tells his driver as he steps out.

As he walks down the mews, the facade of serene normality looms before him. He could almost convince himself that things were fine but for the lingering scents of industrial grade solvents used to erase any trace of what had happened.

It had become so routine to hear JB’s claws and jingling tags as soon as he stepped through the door that the lifeless silence that greets him now feels disconcerting. Slowly, he makes his way up the stairs, feet heavy. In the master bedroom, Eggsy is still upon the bed, just as Harry had left him. An IV stand bearing a mobile of blood bags hangs above him, long red tinged tubes narrowing down like tributaries into a single line fed through Eggsy’s nose. Eggsy glares at him, but it’s still a bit bleary-eyed and dull.

Harry remains in the doorway. “Can you speak?”

It takes several moments, like Eggsy is visibly waging an internal battle with his uncooperative body to part his lips, before a hoarse, “Yes,” emerges.

“Good. That’s good,” Harry says, daring to step into the room and approach the side of the bed, Eggsy’s eyes following him. “You’re healing well. The brain, the nervous system...those are always the slowest to recover. It will take a few days.” He knows from experience, after all.

“Trapped inside my own body ‘til then,” Eggsy slurs. “Bit on the nose.”

Harry refrains from flinching, wondering if he’s built up enough mental callouses by now that the barbs just don’t feel as sharp anymore. “I’m sorry this happened.”

Something bright and furious flares in Eggsy’s eyes but it dies just as quickly back into exhaustion. He swallows, gags a bit around the tube, before sucking in a sharp breath. “You know, for a little while there, I thought this was going to go alright.” Another swallow. “Not great. Obviously. But I could get by.”

“Eggsy….” It’s the simple beaten down resignation that pains Harry the most. 

“So help me god, Harry. If that’s another apology….”

Harry bristles in spite of himself. “Then what? What would you rather I say?”

“Nothing!” comes the sharp retort, as lively and furious as a pang of hunger, as if Eggsy gains strength from his growing anger. “It means fuck all if you keep on fucking doing it!”

“Then tell me what I’m doing wrong!” Harry finds himself shouting back, all control over his composure dissolving like sand. “Tell how to fix it! Because I’m... _trying_ , Eggsy. I’m trying.”

Eggsy’s laugh is ugly and brittle. “That’s just it, isn’t it? All my life, you been trying to _fix_ me, cos I was never gonna be good enough as is, was it? Eggsy, the boy with no dad: give him a medal and a favour. Eggsy, the chav with no job and no manners: give him a crack at Kingsman so he can be respectable. Eggsy, the about-to-be-fucking corpse: change him into a fucking monster!”

Harry’s never been very good at grace or taking the high road. Not in a pub full of drunk brutes looking to inflict violence or in a humid church full of bigots and guns. His mouth gets away from him, sharper and more piercing than any knife or bullet. “Yes, and you never complained about any of it, did you?”

Eggsy’s nostrils flare as something furious flashes across his eyes.

“You love the money, the clothes, the house, the car. The power. You love being powerful. You love being in ultimate control.” Harry can’t stop anymore than he can’t stop the sensation of being brutally flayed alive, by Eggsy’s words and his own. “And you love knowing you’ll always have something to hold over me for the rest of my life.”

Harry realises it at the same time as he says it, a horrible, horrible epiphany he’s been denying for too long: “You love that more than you actually love me.”

Eggsy blinks, face cracking and falling into devastation.

But he doesn’t refute it.

 

_____

 

The ability to move comes in increments: neck, shoulders, back, hips, then finally arms and legs. Until Eggsy can sit up. Hold things again. Stand up. Hobble more than walk. His balance is still shit. Total control over his own body, while impossibly swift if not completely impossible by any human measure, nevertheless feels slow and torturous.

The incessant tingle and itch that only exist beneath his skin, from which he can find no relief.

The boredom of being trapped in his body with nothing to do but wait, helpless, then the frustration of it not quite doing all that Eggsy wants it to do.

The way Harry doesn’t look him in the eyes anymore, doesn’t try to touch him or talk to him unless strictly necessary. Keeps his distance and wields polite but impersonal solicitousness like an impenetrable shield at all other times, even though it _hurts_. It must hurt him too. Rejecting that constant pull. Harry was right on an uncomfortable number of things. Wrong too. Eggsy’s still so angry. So angry. But all he wants is for Harry to wrap his body around his and never let go. Longs for it more than blood itself.

Harry hasn’t thought to replace the collar around his neck. Or doesn’t want to. Eggsy doesn’t ask.

Day four, and Mum calls. This time, Eggsy actually answers. “Hi, Mum.”

“For fuck’s sake, Eggsy, where have you been?”

But there’s so much relief in Mum’s voice that Eggsy closes his eyes and breathes out. “Yeah, sorry. Been really busy. I’ve jumped so many time zones, don’t even know what day it is anymore.” It should be disturbing, how easily the lies roll off his tongue.

“So busy, you didn’t know your dog’s wandered over here?”

Eggsy’s eyes fly open. “What?”

“I thought he was at the kennel, but he was just sitting in front of the door when I got home from the shops the other day, absolutely _filthy_ with god knows what. Had to go give him a bath. You owe me a new bottle of shampoo. Had to use it use it all just to get off whatever shit he’s rolled around in.”

Fucking hell. “He alright? Jesus, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’ve been trying, Eggsy,” Mum says pointedly. “You don’t answer your phone or any of my texts.”

Eggsy winces. “Right. I know. I’ve been—”

“Busy, I know. Just would’ve been nice to know you was still breathing, right?”

Funny thing, that. “Sorry, Mum.”

He hears Mum sigh. “You keep doing this, Eggsy.”

It means fuck all if you keep on fucking doing it. “I’m sorry. Really, I am. I’ll do better. I will.”

“I know you will.” There’s a long pause before he can practically feel Mum give in, forgiveness begged for and given, just like that. Her tone is considerably warmer when she speaks next. “You didn’t give me the number to the kennel. Figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to bring him back there if they lost him in the first place. Anyway, I’m not sure you can have him back now. Daisy hasn’t let him alone since he got here. Feeds him everything she don’t wanna eat. Don’t gotta sweep the floors as much.”

“...maybe that’s not a bad idea,” Eggsy says softly.

Mum practically chokes. “What? Oh no. Absolutely not. I was joking. That dog’s chewed up two pairs of my shoes already, Eggsy. Is this what you let him do in your house?”

“He’s, uh, usually better behaved. He’s just acting out. It’s been…it’s just not a stable environment for him here. Me gone all the time. He’s better off there with Dais.”

“Eggsy,” Mum says in the way she does when he’s about to get a talking to. “He’s your responsibility. You got him, you figure it out. Come over and get him. Let’s see your face now, yeah? We miss you.”

He misses them. So much. Their uncomplicated affection. The simplicity of their life now without having to worry about money or Dean. Harry was right about that, at least. He loves the money and the power to carve out this world for them. “Alright. How about I pop by later today?”

“Come in for supper,” Mum insists. “Seven o’clock. I’m making your favourite.”

At first, he opens his mouth to immediately say no, but...but he’ll choke down all the indigestible food in the world right now just to have a nice, simple night with his family. “Sounds good.”

“Good. We’ll see you later then, babe.”

Sensing she’s about to hang up, the word rushes out of his mouth before he can think better of it. “...Mum?”

“Yeah?”

Eggsy hesitates. “You know I love you, right?”

Of course that immediately makes Mum suspicious. “Eggsy, you alright?”

He’s really an idiot sometimes. “I’m fine. Sorry. I just wanted to say it again. Don’t say it as much as I should.”

“Well, I love you just as much. Even more than that,” Mum says, then, after a pause, gets right back to business. “Still not taking JB, though. You’re taking him back. Seven o’clock, Eggsy. Don’t forget.”

 

_____

 

The first thing Eggsy did upon officially being awarded a seat at the Kingsman table ( _Harry’s_ seat) was to move his mother and sister to a nice little house in Richmond, with three bedrooms, a large kitchen, plenty of light, and a rather decently sized garden—all on a quiet, charming little road. It was everything Eggsy knew his mother dreamed of for them once upon a time, maybe even his Dad too, and even though it was too late for Eggsy, it wouldn’t have to be for Daisy.

The house looks a lot more lived in now. His mother had taken up a bit of planting with flower boxes in the front windows and a lilac bush right at the corner near the pavement. There’s a toddler’s bike sitting out on the front step and a large deflated red ball left discarded in the grass that bears some telltale ragged canine teeth marks.

The first thing Mum does when she opens the door is throw her arms around him and it’s shocking at first. Too much.

She’s so warm, her scent is so sweet, and painfully familiar in a way that puts him at ease. Her heart pulses, sure and steady. She smells like the roast chicken, lemon, and fresh thyme she’s got in the oven and the Chanel perfume she likes to wear. For the first time in a long time, the constant ache and emptiness that’s been sitting in his chest abates, just a little. For as much as Harry had borne him into the life he lives now, this woman in his arms had born him into the one before and every cell in his body seems to remember that fact like it’s been encoded in his DNA. 

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Mum says when she’s pulled back a little to take him in, frowning a little at what she sees. “You’re so skinny and pale! And cold as ice!”

“I think I’m coming down with something.” The usual refrain.

Mum smiles but concern still shines in her eyes. “Well, get in. I’ll put the kettle on. There’s a lot of people who want to see you.”

 _A lot_ is a stretch: a toddler who recognises him enough to not be visibly anxious when he tentatively approaches her and a largely indifferent dog who saunters up to him to sniff at his shoes before wandering to the kitchen in search of dropped crumbs and scraps.

 _Yeah, well, fuck you too_ , Eggsy can’t help but think at JB. That small creature has dragged a fuck tonne of shit into his life recently.

He focuses on Daisy instead, who seems, at least, more enthusiastic towards his presence, even if that enthusiasm is largely transmitted through wide-eyed silent staring. “Hey Dais. Look at you! Getting so big!”

His fingers twitch. In another life, he wouldn’t hesitate to pick her up and marvel at how heavy she’s become while blowing disgusting fart noises into her smooth chubby cheeks to make her laugh. Breathe in her milky scent. Marvel out how small she is in his arms. 

He dare not do any of that now.

So he contents himself with sitting on the edge of the couch while his mother flits about the kitchen to put out a tray for him and watches Daisy organise the toys around her by some taxonomy he isn’t privy to with an amusingly studious expression on her face that is more suitable on a uni student sitting for a final exam. It feels like the closest thing to true peace he’s had in a long while.

 _Everything is gonna be better for you_ , Eggsy silently tells her. _You’ll be happy. You’ll have a good life. I promise._

No sooner does he swear it when he hears another knock at the door and starts to rise to answer it before he can stop himself.

“I’ll get it,” Mum calls out as she crosses the living room, touching his shoulder as she passes by. “Eggsy, get your tea, babe. I’ve laid it out in the kitchen.”

He begins to wonder just how he can get away with eating the bare minimum before his body will start forcefully rejecting what he’s put into it when he hears Mum demand, “What are you doing here, Dean?”

And a very familiar and very unwelcome voice replies, “What, Michelle? A bloke can’t see his family anymore?”

“You can’t just stop by without calling first! Now’s not—”

“I can stop by whenever I want. Or you think you’re too good for the likes of me now, is it? Is it, you traitorous bitch?”

Eggsy practically leaps off the couch and rushes to the front door, snarling, “Get the fuck out of here.”

Dean looks much the same as he ever did, bit unkempt and ageless in that haggard and weathered way he’s been for the last two decades. He slouches at Michelle’s doorstep and smells like he’s been drenched in beer and cooking oil. Pinning Eggsy with a look of mock surprise, his face twists into a sneer. “Muggsy! Where’d you turn up? Thought you was off abandoning your family again.”

Eggsy takes a subconscious step closer. “You’re fucking daft, bruv, if you didn’t learn the first time I wasted you, but I’m happy to give a repeat performance.”

“Eggsy,” Mum says softly, laying a hand across his chest to stop him. “Go back inside. I’ve got this.”

“Yeah, Muggsy,” Dean says, “This don’t concern you. Go hide behind your mummy’s skirts like the posh lil’ twat you wannabe now.”

Eggsy knows it’s baiting, made worse because of how horribly accurate it is, but Mum presses harder on his chest and Daisy’s fussing back in the house. It’s hard, taking that calming moment to wrestle that _desire_ back down, let the feral fury beating in his ears fade away. “If you ain’t gone in two minutes, Dean. I’ll fucking kill you.”

Dean’s laugh is ugly and phlegmatic. “That’s cute. Where were you all the other times I come visit? More than you, that’s for sure. Michelle even invited me in for cuppa tea a few times. You can’t even be bothered to call.”

“Oh, please,” Mum scoffs. “It’s called being civil, Dean, for the sake of our child you don’t even give a shit about, yet you don’t just fuck off and stay away. I ain’t ever wanted you around though. Never.”

All of Dean’s ugly anger turns back to Michelle and brightens like a detonation, exploding in a hand snaking out and backhanding her hard enough to whip her against the door frame.

Eggsy catches her before she falls to the ground, but only long enough to push her back into the house and launch himself at Dean. 

The impact sends them both toppling to the ground hard enough to crack bones in Dean’s body. The air forced out of Dean’s lungs is rancid. He’s suddenly a lot thinner and more frailer in Eggsy’s hands, skin as thin as paper, hollowed out by smoke and drink, a cancer that has consumed itself now that it’s lost its original source of sustenance.

Still a cancer, though. As long as he lives, he’ll never leave them alone. He’ll always ruin everything. He’ll always hurt them. Hurt Mum. Hurt Daisy.

He’s hungry.

So Eggsy tears out his throat.

Teeth sinking into a soft, gristled throat, beer-tainted blood bursting across his tongue, hot and sour and bright, glorious. He pulls at it until he feel the life draining from Dean’s body, feel his wild, desperate struggles weaken in Eggsy’s steely grip, his shouts and curses turn to gurgles and then nothing at all. A human becomes a body in his hands, becomes a thing, a drained and empty sack of lifeless meat. Eggsy lets it go, feeling full, briefly satiated, finally. Buzzing with euphoria.

Someone is screaming. Baby’s crying. 

The world’s gone a bit topsy-turvy with inadvertent inebriation. Fucking Dean, that drunk. Eggsy turns back to the blurry image of Mum. Her makeup’s all ruined again by the tears. Hair too, like she’s grabbed at it in desperation. There’s a reddening mark on her cheek that will darken into another bruise. Her eyes are big and glassy and red with horror. Fear.

Of him.

She only ever looked that way at Dean. Was supposed to.

Dean’s the monster, not him. Dean’s the monster, not him.

“It was him,” Eggsy croaks.

A thin sheet of blood coats his chin, his neck, well soaked into his clothes. He was ravenously messy. He must look like an animal. Less human than he’s ever been. He takes a step forward, raises a bloody hand to her, to calm maybe, or seek comfort, reassurance. It’s not him. This is not him. “Mum.”

But Michelle flinches back like she’s about to be hit again. “Get the fuck away from me.”

Like it’s not him. He’s not him. Not anymore. Just another monster in her life.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Daisy’s cries ring in his ears. His mum’s crying heaves. Someone’s phoning the police. Neighbours beginning to murmur and gawk. This is it for him, he knows. He’s done it and there’s nothing saving him now.

He starts backing away before fully turning and taking off into a blind, stumbling run.

It doesn’t mean anything. Not if you keep fucking doing it.

 

_____

 

It’s a fucking mess, the clean up. Agents intercept the dispatch and convince official authorities it’s nothing. Disposal and clean up crew for the body, all the blood. More agents arrive on the scene to take care of witnesses, of which there are too many. It’s not going to be neat, the collective amnesia of an entire neighbourhood. Too many ways this could all go wrong somewhere down the line. But what else can they do?

Disappointing Michelle again. At least this time, she won’t remember it.

Harry stands on the little walkway leading up to the house, an island in a sea of grim activity. Already most of the scene’s been cleared away, slowly inching back into a facade of normalcy once more. No more blood. Dean’s body on its way to incineration. No one will really miss him, will just be grateful he’s gone.

Merlin finally steps out of the house, looking like he hasn’t slept in days, which is probably the case. Before he can speak, Harry says, “I didn’t want to put that collar back on him. That was my fault.”

“So it would seem,” Merlin says. “I’d ask what the fuck you were thinking, but really, I know why. And in the end, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

No, it doesn’t. The conclusion is inevitable now, barrelling down like a train. Harry would sink down to his knees if he thought it would help his case, but instead, he tries not to sound desperate and doesn’t entirely succeed. “Please. Just bring him in. Don’t….”

“I can’t promise you that, Harry. Not anymore.”

“He won’t consent to being locked up for the rest of his life. He won’t let that happen.” Backed into a corner, he’ll be at his most dangerous, Harry knows.

Merlin’s eyes grow hard. “Well, that’s his decision, isn’t it? I can’t stand by and let this happen again. I let this go on for too long already.”

It may be laughable to think Merlin allowed any sentiment to cloud his judgment, but in a way, it’s true. Anyone else, and Merlin would have locked away or executed a long time ago without second guessing or regret. Not these constant allowances and second chances. They were already on borrowed time, weren’t they? “Just let me talk to him first. I can control him. No one else will get hurt that way.”

“I don’t know about that, Harry,” Merlin says, unmoved, looking at him now like a stranger. “I know where your priorities lie now. I don’t think you can look me in the eye and tell me Kingsman comes first.”

Harry tenses. The danger prickles at his senses. “You mean to lock us up, then?” he casually asks, already knowing the heart-sinking answer.

“I think we both know this whole experiment is over,” Merlin says, looking him steadily in the eye.

The seconds stretch on, and neither one moves or says a word as if to dare the other to break the stalemate first.

 _Make a move, you’ll regret it_ , Merlin’s gaze says.

“Merlin,” Percival says, puncturing the weighted atmosphere as unobtrusively as he always does.

Merlin blinks and looks away first. “What is it?”

“Lancelot’s called in. Two of ours are down on Battersea Park Road. Disarmed. Weapons missing. We’re pulling up the CCTV to confirm.”

“Still alive?” Merlin asks.

Percival doesn’t even bat an eye or glance at Harry, like he knows who’s really in charge now. “Yes, if out of commission for awhile. Broken arms and ribs, looks like.”

“Good. Tell Lancelot to remain in the area and head there yourself. If he’s taken our weapons, he can be tracked. I’ll send the coordinates en route.”

When Percival is out of earshot, Harry turns back to Merlin. “I take it they’ve all been specially equipped to take down Eggsy. Lethal force?”

“Should it come to it,” Merlin confirms. “It’s time you come with me now, Harry. There’s nothing more you can do here.” For Eggsy. For anyone.

Please be obliging and come quietly to his own prison for the rest of his unnatural life, or until Merlin sees fit to end it. For the good of the world.

Harry grabs Merlin’s wrist before he can bring his gun up and twists it, knocking that dreaded weapon from his hand and turning to elbow Merlin in the face just hard enough to knock him out for the count and swiftly, if gently, lower him to the ground. No one around them has time to react.

Harry looks at them, sees the shock in their eyes. “Minor disagreement. It happens.”

And then he’s gone.

 

_____

 

Merlin and Kingsman may have the latest cutting-edge technology on their side, but it has nothing on the more primitive forces at work between Harry and what he’s created. He can pick out Eggsy from a million other existences now, their scents and heartbeats and blood, clear as a candle in the dark.

Staying out of the camera’s eye or moving too fast to fully be captured by it, Harry moves through the streets, among its people and cars, until he find himself himself, quixotically, back at his own house, looking up at his front-facing terrace, meeting Eggsy’s gaze. It’s almost a parody of that other time, an angry Eggsy emerging from his stolen cab, Harry so very disappointed in him.

Harry looks down and sees the light ray gun held loosely in his hand. “Do you mean to use that on me, or yourself? It’ll only painfully incapacitate.”

“Not if I aim for the head,” Eggsy says. As to whose, Harry still can’t be sure.

“Eggsy,” Harry says, adding a note of urgency into his tone. “They’ll be here shortly.”

“I know,” Eggsy says, looking at some middle distance. Hardly seems affected by it at all. His face is empty. “I know.”

The lack of any sort of reaction only serves to make Harry more afraid. “Let’s go. We can go somewhere else. Anywhere else. Just us.”

Eggsy doesn’t move. Harry practically growls in frustration. “I could _make_ you.”

This, at least, causes Eggsy to blink and focus on him. Some mixed emotion flashing across his gaze for a brief moment. “You could. And know that I would hate you for the rest of my life.”

“I don’t care,” Harry says fiercely. “If it saves your life. I don’t care.”

Everything in Eggsy’s face turns savage as he lifts the gun and aims it at Harry, “Then you first.”

Harry sees his finger tighten on the trigger, opens his mouth to command, _Don’t_ , but another voice beats him to it.

“Eggsy!”

Eggsy stills as Lancelot comes into view, gun at the ready. Not the light ray gun. The one filled with syringes that will kill them. He sees the fear in Harry’s eyes and slowly lowers his own weapon. “Good girl, Rox. Always were faster than the others, eh?”

Something in Lancelot’s face finally breaks. “I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

“Neither do I,” Eggsy says, devastated, but then his face clears into a determined frown. “No, that’s not true. I know exactly what I am. Something you need to put down.”

He sees it in Eggsy’s eyes first. What will happen. “Eggsy,” Harry tries. “St—”

But Eggsy’s already turning, moving forward, lifting his gun to aim at Lancelot, teeth bared, still covered in dried blood from his last kill, a monster.

And Lancelot reacts as any professional Kingsman should when faced with an immediate lethal threat. Her finger tightens on the trigger, and she shoots.

Eggsy chokes and jerks back, weapon falling out of his hand first. “Good girl, Rox. Good girl.” His knees waver as he stares down at the syringe still lodged in his chest, emptying its contents into his body. Already begins to feel it, the end.

Harry scales the columns and clears the balustrade to catch Eggsy before he falls, yanking the dart from his body like it will matter now. “Eggsy, Eggsy….what have you done? What have you done?”

Eggsy looks back up at him, slowly blinking. “It hurts worse than I even thought,” he gasps, eyes beginning to water. “Like pure sunlight in my veins.”

Harry feels like it is coursing through his own, a bright, burning tide, purifying and total. With Eggsy his arms, he can feel it, their connection being scoured away. “Please, no. No, just hold on. Hold on a little longer. We’ll fix this.”

A tremulous smile wavers across Eggsy’s face. “Sorry, Harry. All of it.” He tries to say something more, but gasps instead, spine arching until he cries out. Dying. Forever.

“Eggsy!” Harry tries to rouse him to no avail. When he starts seizing, Harry scoops him up and turns to face Lancelot’s tear-stained face. “Help me.”

Lancelot’s mouth opens and closes. “I don’t know what to do. Arthur, I don’t know what to….”

“Merlin did this! He can fix it!” A small voice tells him this isn’t true, but it’s Harry’s only hope now. “He can fix it. Bring him back to Kingsman. We’ve got to go now.”

But Lancelot remains rooted to the spot, gaping at them both. “Eggsy’s….”

They don’t have the time for this. He practically snarls in Lancelot’s face. “You’ll have killed him if you don’t help me now. Do you understand?”

That seems to do the trick. Lancelot starts and leads them back down the stairs, calling for a Kingsman cab that’s been idling at the corner while Harry opts for the faster method of his own two swift feet instead.

Lancelot’s true to her word at least in that when Harry arrives at the shop, Eggsy curled against his chest, no one tries to stop him.

It’s only in the shuttle that all of Harry’s fear catches up with him. He can only sit and wait as Eggsy dies in his arms, making horrible choking noises all the while. They’re not going to make it.

The serum consumes everything in Eggsy’s body that’s keeping him alive, so Harry will just have to keep giving it more to keep it from claiming Eggsy completely. A long battle, then.

He lifts his wrist and slashes a sharp fang down it’s length, deep and sure. The blood already begins seeping down his arm before he presses it to Eggsy’s mouth. Eggsy starts choking and coughing out most of it, but Harry just leans his head back further and practically shoves his whole hand down his throat.

The world begins to dim by the time the shuttle jerks to a stop, Harry almost toppling out of his seat from the momentum. When he tries to stand, he feels lightheaded, weak, barely able to hold onto Eggsy.

As soon as he staggers out of the shuttle, he’s greeted by a wall of agents and their weapons. Merlin stands in the centre, what will sure to be a bruise beginning to bloom around his eye. “You can kill me. You can let him die. But you can also save him. Please save him.”

Merlin presses his lips together. “The serum?”

Harry nods.

“Then there’s nothing to be done for it.” There’s almost a note of sympathy in Merlin’s voice, Harry imagines.

“I don’t accept that.”

“Harry.”

“You did this!” Harry shouts. “You have to fix him!”

Merlin doesn’t immediately speak as his gaze moves to Eggsy dispassionately. “The serum kills the virus in his blood, and that’s the only thing keeping him alive. There’s nothing I can do, Harry.”

Harry looks back down at Eggsy. There’s barely anything left calling to him now. A whisper. A fading whisper. His boy is dying. His love is dying. Not all the blood in his own body will save him now, not even if Harry had his veins drained by that ghastly machine of….

Harry glances up at Merlin again. “Then give him human blood.”

Merlin’s brow furrows. “Excuse me?”

“You said your serum kills the virus in our blood, so it’s just a lack of oxygenated blood in our veins that eventually kills us. So put human blood back into him. No more virus. He’ll live. He won’t be a….”

Merlin swallows. “I doubt that’s going to work, Harry. We can hardly know what that virus does to keep you—”

“We don’t know much about any of it, do we?” Harry says sharply. “We experiment. We _try_. This is Eggsy’s last hope. _Please_.”

Merlin looks as if he wants to say no. That this is a waste of time. That Harry’s used up all his chances. He has. More than several times over. He’ll have Eggsy wrestled from his arms and taken down to be incinerated. Harry will be dragged back down to his prison to live for as long as Merlin says he can, until Harry begs for the same serum too, because there’s no purpose to existing anymore, not any of this. Not without Eggsy.

“Come with me,” Merlin tells Harry, before turning on his heel.

In Merlin’s sub-level lab, Harry lays Eggsy carefully down upon the exam table while Merlin fetches several blood bags and the hulking girth of the dialysis machine that looks awfully like the one he’d seen in Markova’s cellar.

“Is that…?”

Merlin shrugs and nods. “Might as well scavenge all that’s useful. It’s already been modified to suit our purposes.”

Merlin doesn’t mention anything about finding Markova’s body down there. The implications of that are too much to consider at the moment, so Harry pushes those troubling thoughts away as he watches Merlin insert catheters into all of Eggsy’s major arteries and turn on the machine. Tries to fumble for and grasp what light he can sense is left in Eggsy. Tries to pull it back.

_Don’t leave me. I was so alone before I had you._

He watches Merlin intubate him with a frown.

“If this works,” Merlin explains, noticing his expression. “He’ll need oxygen.”

The machine begins to work. The blood in the bags is drawn in a red line down through the clear plastic tubes into Eggsy’s veins while his thicker, darker, dead blood is pumped out through others.

Funny, how his connection to Eggsy is still fading even as the most delicious scent is flooding the room and his skin is warming beneath Harry’s hand. Harry’s still losing him. “His heart’s not beating.”

“Maybe it needs a bit of a jump,” Merlin says, coming up behind him with a defibrillator.

The paddles are applied to Eggsy’s chest. There’s a high whine of the charge, as grating to Harry’s ears as a mosquito, before the electricity discharges and Eggsy arches off the table in reflex, rattling the blood filled tubes hanging off him.

Harry hears it then. The arrhythmic stutter startled awake after a long hibernation. Shuddering at first, then steady. Nearly deafening, drowning out all other sounds in the room. A pulse. Alive. The most beautiful sound he’s ever heard.

“His heart is beating on its own,” Harry whispers in wonder, still transfixed.

Merlin wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, letting his shoulders sink in relief for a half second before he’s up and moving again, hooking Eggsy up to an ECG so he can hear it too. The beeping of the monitor is hardly as melodic as listening to the heart itself, but if it reassures Merlin and motivates him to keep going in this whole foolhardy endeavour, then so be it.

Eggsy’s heart is beating. Blood is flowing through his veins. Oxygen is flowing to his brain. Alive. Like a human.

Harry caresses his warm cheek. He can’t feel him anymore at all. The connection is gone as if it never existed. Dwindled quietly away.

“We don’t know if he’ll wake up from this,” Merlin soberly reminds him after several minutes of them just listening to Eggsy’s heart together in silence. “Or if the virus has been truly cleansed from his system. Or if he does wake up, he won’t have severe damage, or….” The possibilities are endless. The odds are truly against them, really. Even still.

“No,” Harry agrees. “But this is more than he would have ever had before.”

 

_____

 

The days go by, sunless in the windowless rooms of Merlin’s lab that Harry doesn’t leave. He’s a voluntary prisoner, keeping watch over Eggsy, lulled by the continuous beat of his heart, the way his chest rises and falls with each pump of oxygen into his lungs. The rush of hot blood beneath his skin.

Eventually, Merlin declares Eggsy’s system as clean of the virus as it will ever be and swaps out the blood for saline solution instead. The feeding tube, this time, doesn’t deliver blood but nutrients that a living human being would need. Merlin inserts a urinary catheter because Eggsy’s kidneys can now pass waste.

But the most promising sign of it all is that the EEG shows brain activity.

Harry rests his head across Eggsy’s chest so he can get the clearest fidelity of Eggy’s heartbeat, letting that rhythm drive away all other thoughts and sensations. Eggsy is alive. Eggsy is human.

He does this until he loses track of the hours and days, only Merlin coming in to occasionally remind him to eat. Barely notices it when Lancelot stops by to visit and tearfully apologises, kissing Eggsy’s forehead before she leaves again.

Doesn’t really keep track of anything until the day Eggsy’s hand touches his head, weakened fingers tangling through his hair.

Harry looks up sharply to see that Eggsy’s eyes are open, if barely. But even in that small sliver, there’s a relieving cognisance to them. 

“Welcome back to the world of the living,” Harry tells him, taking hold of his hand and kissing his knuckles, thumb brushing up against the pulse in his wrist.

He thinks he sees Eggsy smile before his eyes flutter shut.

That innate song is silent. Harry can’t feel Eggsy in any other way beyond the usual five senses. In the span of that silence, there’s an aching absence in his bones that he tries to ignore, a weird pressure in his chest that makes him want to sob if he lets it. How ridiculous.

Eventually, Eggsy can stay awake for longer periods of time and breathe well enough on his own for Merlin to replace the intubation tube with a cannula. Cognitive tests are performed, in which Eggsy passes with flying colours.

“How do you feel?” Merlin asks.

“Like someone brought me back from the dead,” Eggsy dryly says.

“Which party is currently in power in Parliament?”

To which Eggsy replies, “Still a buncha cunts.”

“Fair enough,” Merlin shrugs, closing down Eggsy’s file on his tablet before finally regarding Eggsy with something like exasperation and quiet awe. “I daresay, Eggsy, I do believe you’ve made a full and complete recovery from your recent and prolonged experience with, er, being dead.”

“You cured me. I didn’t that was possible.”

Merlin glances at Harry. “Neither did I. It was Harry’s idea.” Then, sarcastically, “And it was, as they say, just so crazy, it had to work.”

“A far-fetched plot,” Eggsy mutters to himself.

“But this is your life,” Harry says, squeezing his hand tightly because the rest of him feels numb. “So I don’t care.”

 

_____

 

Mobility and coordination are a bit off. Eggsy finds himself weaker than he can ever recall being. Like all the nerves and muscles in his body haven’t used in a year. Harry dutifully sees him through his PT exercises, attention rapt upon the breaths of exertion seeping from Eggsy’s lips, the beads of sweat shining across his skin.

The muscles in his arms flex and shake with the effort to hold himself up on the bars. His heart beats rapidly, his pulse fluttering at his neck. He smells alive. It makes Harry yearn and hunger i all the wrong ways. He wishes he could touch Eggsy and feel whole again.

It’s stupid. He feels like he’s grieving for something he’s lost, but Eggsy’s right here. Eggsy’s alive.

“You know,” Eggsy grunts as he manages to make another step forward, even if it’s really just sort of shuffling his feet forward a few inches. Soon it will be long, confident strides. Soon, Eggsy will be able to move out on his own again. Reclaim his agent status. Move about the world as he always should have done, being a part of it once more. “You could do it too.”

“Do what too?” Harry asks.

“Take the serum. Become human.”

But Harry’s already shaking his head before Eggsy’s even done. “It’s too risky. We don’t know if it will work the same way. We don’t even know how or why it worked at all. You weren’t what you were for long, relatively speaking, Eggsy. It seems like it would be easier to reverse the effects on you than it would be for me.”

Eggsy just looks at him for a long moment before he says, “I think you’re just afraid.”

The whole remark annoys him. Harry finds himself snapping out, “Afraid of what? Death? A bit late for that.”

“Of being a boring, vulnerable human again,” Eggsy says. “You forget I know you, Harry. You love having power and control too. But you’re the one who told me how difficult it is to stay in control the way you are now. Believe me, I know firsthand how true that is.”

Harry grits his teeth and looks away as Eggsy finally reaches the end of his bar walk and gratefully sinks into the wheelchair waiting next to it. “Fucking hate PT. Weak as a foal, I am. Fuck, I still have to wear _adult nappies_ , for fuck’s sake. My little sister is better potty-trained than I am at the moment.”

“That’s not what I’m afraid of,” Harry finally says, ignoring the litany of rants Eggsy’s taken to issuing to vent his frustrations and impatience. “Becoming human again.”

“Then what?” Eggsy prompts.

“I’m afraid….” Harry trails off. Swallows. Eggsy waits patiently. “I’m afraid I’ve forgot how.”

Eggsy’s face softens. “Well, your body certainly forgets how,” he jokes lightly before becoming serious. “But...do you really want to remain capable of doing the things you’ve done?”

Harry looks at him. Eggsy puts on a good show of his usual swagger and bravado these days, but Harry always looks closer, can see so much more than most others.

He sees the guilt and horror still haunting him in a wear pallor and dark smudges beneath his eyes. The nightmares that let him get so very little sleep and linger even through the waking day. This is what Eggsy will have to live with, for the rest of his life.

Imagine what would await him. Even if he could be brought back to life, Harry doesn’t think he’ll survive the pain and guilt.

 

_____

 

And then eventually, one day, Eggsy is cleared again for missions.

He’s lost the Galahad title, but perhaps that’s for the best. The very name seems cursed.

Instead, he takes up Lamorak and conquers the world as he always should have done, a bright and fearless knight, shining with youth and vitality.

At least Harry gets to watch, from his windowless, locked room beneath the surface of the earth. Merlin is kind enough to give him access to the feeds. It’s more than he deserves.

He tries to be content with this. He really does. There isn’t an throbbing emptiness that exists inside him. Or if there is, it’s manageable. It won’t kill him, at least. He tries not to think about how it felt with Eggsy in his arms, themselves existing alone together in a large, limitless sea. How comforting it was to not be alone.

But everyday, the memory of that feels fades a little more, until the day comes where he can’t remember what it felt like at all. He can only feels the emptiness now. The lack.

Overhead, the world is passing him by. Eggsy is growing older and older and he is...he is existing, down here. Stagnant. A dead thing.

It was bearable before, somehow.

But now it’s not.

 

_____

 

“Okay,” Harry tells Eggsy one day on one of his few precious visits when he’s not busy jumping from mission to mission. “I’ll do it. I want to try.”

He’s not completely confident as he sounds, though. He just knows that he can’t be like _this_ any longer.

But he knows he’s made the right decision when Eggsy looks at him with an expression of dawning hope.

 

_____

 

Being back on the sterile exam table is unsettling. Too many memories of pain, both voluntary and not, linger here. Merlin hovering over him and inserting needles into him, doubly so.

“I’ll be here when you open your eyes again,” Eggsy steadfastly assures him, his eyes bright with determination. He smells like Harry’s old cologne and JB and his mother’s house. Must have recently visited.

He’s overcompensating, Harry thinks, because no one is sure this one will work. If Harry will ever wake up again.

“Guess I’ll see you on the other side,” Harry tries to say flippantly, but largely fails. He hates being afraid. It feels distinctly powerless. Terrible.

“You take too much joy in making my life a living hell to stop now,” Merlin tells him, and, well, that’s certainly true. And cheering.

The last thing he feels before Merlin plunges that poisonous serum into his veins is Eggsy’s warm, promising lips upon his, and if that’s the last memory he ever has, well, then it would have been worth it for that alone.


	10. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sticking with me through this wild ride or vampires and horror. :D

On the train from Paris to Kiev, ten minutes in, two gentlemen are having a quiet but passionate argument a few rows over.

“McDonalds? Really?” Disdain evident in his voice.

“What? It’s fucking delicious.”

“It’s also devoid of nutrients, artery clogging and cholesterol raising.”

“But delicious artery clogging and cholesterol raising. Oh, come on, Harry, live a little. You’ve been on a liquid diet for like the last couple of decades. One little big mac ain’t gonna kill you.”

“You, of all people, should be feeling your own mortality quite keenly.”

“I’d rather spend the rest of my limited days, however long or short they are, actually _living_ , you know. And that means eating fucking McDonalds when I want. And fucking in a McDonalds, which you had no complaints over, by the way. But if you wanna continue with your sad salad, you go right ahead, love. It’s your life.”

There’s a long silence, then a resigned sigh. It’s swiftly followed by a crow of victory.

Then, a very full mouth says, “There, happy?”

“Very,” comes the other smug voice. “Admit it, it’s delicious.”

“It’s alright.”

“Fine, now give it back.”

“Nope, I don’t think so, I think it’s mine now and I want to finish it.”

The other voice squawks indignantly. “What? Hey, no! That’s mine, Harry! Harry!”

There’s a beautiful blonde woman sitting across the table from Maya Rucinski who appears just as amused by this overheard exchange. When she catches Maya’s eye, she smirks. “ _Men_. They do not change, do they?”

Russian accent, Maya thinks before saying, “No,” and turning back down to her book, somewhat unnerved when the woman continues to study her with an expression Maya can only think of as _hungry_.

“Are you going to Kiev?” The woman asks when Maya finally looks up again.

“Lublin,” Maya says. “I am a student there.” After another expectant pause, she ask, “And you?”

The woman takes her time in considering her answer, as if she doesn’t exactly know. “I do not know where I will ultimately end up. I am following my family, you could say. We have some unfinished business.”

The cold look in her eyes and the way she speaks sends a cold chill down Maya’s spine. “I hope you resolve your differences. Fighting with family is the greatest of all heartbreaks.”

The woman looks startled for a moment, and then she smiles. It does not put Maya at ease. “Thank you. I believe we will.” Then, after another deeply uncomfortable look, “Would you like to accompany me to the dining car? I am famished. I will buy your dinner, of course.”

“Thank you, but I am not very hungry.”

“Don’t be rude,” the woman says sharply, causing Maya to freeze.

There is something in her eyes that will accept no further arguments. Maya feels her heart speed up. “I am sorry. Okay. I will go with you.”

The woman smiles, too many teeth. “Lovely. Come on then.”

After a moment of dread, Maya reluctantly stands up and follows her, somehow knowing that if she were to turn and run away in the opposite direction, she would be easily caught.

She passes by the two men. An older gentleman and a surprisingly younger one closer to her own age. Looks like they’ve split the big mac and salad equally between them as a compromise.

 _Help_ , she wants to shout at them. _Help me_.

But they do not look up as she passes. They only have eyes for each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Come shout at me on [tumblr](http://futuredescending.tumblr.com).


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